


Transmutations

by hopeless_eccentric



Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [31]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Accelerated Healing Factor Juno Steel, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Noir, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cuddling & Snuggling, First Kiss, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Junoverse | Juno Steel Universe, Other, Shapeshifter Peter Nureyev, Shapeshifting, Superpowers, for aesthetic only it's the 60's, who knows how the hell to tag that, x-men style societal treatment of superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:33:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28253970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: Hyperion City was the kind of place where rain hung in the air for days after the fact, leaving the city streets glistening and the city lights reflected in a thousand dying parodies of neon hues. The sidewalks ached a deep, slate gray and fog liked to slink around corners and settle in back alleys and nip at your heels. For better or for worse, a lot of people called it home.It was just the rotten luck of Juno Steel, private eye, that he was included in that number.Rec fill for Danny!!
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921492
Comments: 132
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goinghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goinghost/gifts).



> hey all!! this is gonna be going up daily, so look out for the new chapters every day for the next foreseeable while!! Just as a heads up, this one takes some cues from standard noir, which has a tendency to have some heavier themes (all of which will be listed in content warnings) and a lot of stuff mentioned in passing. make sure to check the content warnings!!
> 
> Content warnings for implied sexual content, war mention, food/drink mention, fictional oppression (essentially the idea of oppression against mutants being used as an analogy for real world bigotry, a lot like the concept of x-men), smoking mention, referenced grief/mourning,

Hyperion City was the kind of place where rain hung in the air for days after the fact, leaving the city streets glistening and the city lights reflected in a thousand dying parodies of neon hues. The sidewalks ached a deep, slate gray and fog liked to slink around corners and settle in back alleys and nip at your heels. For better or for worse, a lot of people called it home.

It was just the rotten luck of Juno Steel, private eye, that he was included in that number.

The morning in question was another one of those hazy days, a little too chilly for spring and a little too warm for winter. On a coin toss, a coat could become a nuisance or a necessity. Fate hung in the air like the ring of a gong, and even though the taste of his coffee and the familiar mess of his office felt mundane, some strange, shivery part of Juno that liked to sit at the back of his mind and whisper suspicion and paranoia and prophecy murmured tidings of a twist.

Juno knew better than to listen to it. Even as it buzzed at the back of his brain, he squeezed his eyes shut. He drank his coffee. He glanced out the gaping glass window beside his desk and watched people flit by, heads down against the mist and coats held tight about them. He tried to guess where each person was going. He wondered if any were like him.

Hyperion City’s weather wasn’t the only thing that made it unique. Back before the second World War and the protests and fate’s insistence of spitting on Juno Steel every time it got the chance, Hyperion had been one of those places where people with certain mutations or abilities or whatever the hell the papers wanted to call them gathered. It had been a safehaven of sorts, at least until the law decided such things were best not acted upon.

Juno wished it were that easy, though he had to thank his lucky stars his particular cocktail of government-sponsored issues was easy to hide.

Before he could drown his thoughts in any more coffee, the rotary phone across from him on his desk sputtered to life. He huffed into the oversweet dregs of his drink, but set it down anyway, throwing the phone a spiteful look before taking it off the receiver.

“Juno Steel, private eye,” he answered, though it came out as more of a growl without clearing his throat.

“Why, detective,” the man on the other end of the line mused. “My apologies if I rang you at a bad time.”

“No time like the present,” Juno huffed. “Light day. What do you want?”

“My name is Peter Ransom,” the man on the line returned. “I’m a reporter for the Daily Planet.”

Juno snorted.

“My apologies, I’m a new hire,” Ransom chuckled. “I meant the Daily Bugle. Such things can be comically easy to confuse.”

“Hell of an accusation,” Juno returned.

“My dear detective, your status is of public record,” Ransom all but chided, though it seemed no humor had drained from his voice.

In fact, a strange part of Juno felt that he could listen to that voice all day. Ransom sounded soft and sweet and soothing, more like honey than the smoke-choked rasp of the majority of the reporters who wanted a word with Juno over the phone. If not for the memories of dogged tabloid writers wanting a quote on how exactly he felt about one piece of legislation or another, he would have almost enjoyed the experience.

“Yeah, whatever,” Juno huffed.

“I take it you don’t like journalists,” Ransom noted.

“Geez, Ransom, maybe you should be a detective,” Juno continued, crossing his feet over one another upon the desk. 

“Oh, no, detective,” Ransom audibly smiled. Juno was struck by the strange feeling that he wanted to see that expression in person. He tried and failed to push the thought away, but it wouldn’t budge, especially not as Ransom continued. “I’m merely a firm believer in the practice of figuring out how to talk to someone if you wish to learn how to get along with them. I certainly hope we might find our manner of communication soon, Juno.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Juno swallowed. “So what’s your script? What kind of angle are you working with? Do you want me depressed as hell, getting better, some kinda tragic hero, enemy of all you good normal people, what?”

“Well, I’m afraid my editors and I have come into a bit of a disagreement,” Ransom returned, his voice finally beginning to slow. “You see, they want an article on all things Project Gemini. I’m sure you’re aware of the twentieth anniversary.”

Juno winced down the rest of his coffee. He had been trying not to think about the war and the bomb and the fated interview. Benten, the other half to an experiment, had crashed and burned under the weight of one more round of firebombing he just couldn’t seem to outrun, no matter what kind of chemicals the American scientists stuck in him. 

If they had sent Juno in, he would’ve made it. That mattered a whole lot more to Juno than it did to the scientists and generals, who merely thanked their lucky stars that they had used twins and that those propaganda interviews of America’s Brightest Smile wouldn’t disappear. They didn’t have to admit Benzaiten was dead, of course, if the world didn’t know he had a twin.

That would’ve been the case if Juno had managed to keep his trap shut on national television.

“Yeah, don’t remind me,” Juno huffed before his mind could begin to roll through circles and circles of the live confessional and the propaganda police work and the PR fiasco that hissed and spat at him for nearly a decade after the war.

“Well, I didn’t intend to,” Ransom returned kindly. “I don’t think it would be journalistically ethical of me to hunt down the lady most famous for wanting to be left alone and force him to recount pain and tragedy. Of course, your brother is also on the public record. If I wanted to research him, I would do so on my own time.”

Juno didn’t realize his sigh of relief was audible until Peter chuckled.

“No worries, Juno, there’s nothing about Super Steel you could tell me that I couldn’t learn elsewhere. There’s no need to torture you, even if my editors insist I do so,” Ransom continued, and somewhere, miles away or wherever the hell he was, Juno could tell he was flashing that damned smile again.

“Uh—thank you,” Juno returned, though the words felt strange in his mouth. “Look, I don’t get a lot of decent reporters.”

“This is Hyperion City, Juno,” Ransom chuckled. “There are none.”

“Yeah, whatever, but seriously,” Juno continued. “My morning’s clear. I had someone call ahead for the afternoon, but if you can get here quick, I think I can pencil you in for a half-decent interview.”

“Well, I suppose a payphone on the street outside your office would qualify as quick,” Ransom smiled.

Juno’s pride took a blow at exactly how quickly he stood to glance out his office window, though it was nothing his advanced healing factor couldn’t address. Even with the phone held away from his ear, he could still read Ransom’s friendly call on the lips of the gentleman in the phonebooth on the street.

“Hello, Juno,” he greeted. Juno could hear his chuckle a million miles away through the phone.

Juno had thought ‘tall, dark, and handsome’ was the kind of descriptor books used to subtly ask the reader to fill in their own epitome of the male form in the place of the love interest. However, Peter Ransom was exactly such. He was long and lean, dressed to the nines in the kind of overcoat and sunglasses no starting salary reporter could afford on their own. Juno would have spent a little more time concerned about it had Ransom not fixed him with a movie star’s grin and a tip of his hat, which he then swept under his arm like some sort of gentleman from a hundred years in the past.

Ransom didn’t smile so much as he bared his teeth, his sharpened smile as sickly sweet as honey, and despite himself, Juno was pretty sure he wanted a taste. Juno wished that bothered him more, but he hadn’t even noticed that the line was no longer connected until Ransom had chuckled out his farewells with a laugh like the ringing of wedding bells and begun to make his way towards Juno’s office building.

In fact, Juno had barely put the phone back on the receiver when Peter Ransom’s shadow, sharp and looming and somehow, revealing a curved cheek, darkened the glass on the other side of the door.

Usually, Juno would have yelled for the guest to let themselves in, if he didn’t demand confirmation that they had an appointment before their hand could so much as close around the doorknob. He wasn’t usually the type to jog through the office and lobby in a matter of four strides and drag the door open before his client could even open their mouth to greet him. He also usually wasn’t the type to make dazzled eye contact the moment they met, but it seemed agreeing to an interview with Peter Ransom was far from the first exception he was going to make for the gentleman.

“Hello, detective,” Ransom chuckled the moment the door opened, his eyes flicking down to Juno’s eyes and lips and neck and back up while his teeth bared themselves in a bone-white grin. “It’s been far too long.”

“It’s been minutes,” Juno breathed.

“Both can be true, Juno,” Ransom smiled.

Before Juno could search blindly for his composure, Ransom stepped into the office, moving more like the stretched shadow from a streetlamp than a man. In the same breath, he swept Juno’s hand into his and bowed his head to kiss the top of it. A stronger man wouldn’t have sputtered, gaze long lost on such a pretty shade of wine red shining off the back of his hand like a love bite, but with those dark, sharp eyes still flicking up and down the length of his sweater, Juno didn’t particularly feel like being strong.

“Quite the gentleman, Ransom,” Juno snorted when air finally saw fit to come back to his lungs.

Ransom laughed, and all the air in the room seemed to leave. All that was left was smoke, thick and sweet and heavy. It seemed to curl from Ransom’s lips with every word, like the twisting, slithering bloom from between the painted lips of a silver screen starlet.

Juno had thought that smile was pretty from afar, but with the distance between them cut short to a couple of inches that ached with all the potency of the kind of day-old bruise that liked to slink its way up past the collars of Juno’s turtlenecks, he was struck by the realization that his smile dazzled up close. 

Even merely shaking his hand, the lingering of Ransom’s fingers and the glinting of his grin in the low office light seemed to promise a thousand things that were unprofessional for Juno to be so much as considering, and inhumane of Ransom to make him think about before his lunch break.

“Always, for a lady such as yourself,” Ransom chuckled, snapping Juno out of his stupor when he took a seat across from Juno’s desk. The distance could have been miles. 

Juno sat down on the clear patch of his desk on Ransom’s side and told himself not to think about it too much.

“Well, I’m glad to have you in here,” Juno cleared his throat.

“It’s lovely, finally meeting you in the flesh,” Peter smiled. 

Juno tried to ignore the way those dark and sharp and dazzling eyes traced up the curves of his calves before flickering back up to his face. He couldn’t help a slight laugh that Ransom returned in kind, and though Juno wanted to hear it go on forever, the sound regretfully trailed away into something thoughtful as Ransom rummaged through the pockets of his coat for a notepad.

“No audio recorder?” Juno asked.

Ransom raised an eyebrow.

“Beg pardon?”

“What kind of publication are you running if you’re doing an interview without any kind of record?”

“One with notes and a decent memory, I suppose,” Ransom replied, words growing stiff where his posture and face seemed determined to remain relaxed.

Juno knew a lie when he saw one. He also knew a good liar.

“Who’s your editor?”

“Detective, I see no reason you should be interviewing me in such a manner when I merely want to preserve your good name,” Ransom returned, a little too sharply. “I’ve stuck my neck out enough to write about an individual possessing abilities such as yours in a positive light. I’ll likely have some kind of case file on me by the end of the month, and I promise you, that is something journalists make a sincere attempt to avoid.”

“Sorry,” Juno huffed, even if his arms remained crossed over his chest.

“It’s of no matter. I can hardly expect an investigator to stop investigating,” Ransom replied. His smile bloomed as quickly as it had vanished, and for a moment, Juno couldn’t help but squint and wonder if it almost looked different from the last time he had seen it. “We have a joke in news writing. Juno, do you know what the highest honor for a journalist is?”

“The Pullitzer?”

“Assassination,” Peter returned lightly. “As for your interview, I was hoping I might be able to publish a clearer picture of Juno Steel the person. Of course, the world knows you as Super Steel, or at least the only surviving Super Steel, a product of Project Gemini and the anti-mutant legislation’s spit cup for the last few decades, but I was hoping to get through this interview with as few political questions as possible.”

Juno snorted bitterly.

“Really? A reporter who doesn’t wanna talk about politics. That’s rich.”

“I like being alive, Juno,” Ransom said. “Now, in regards to the pro-mutant movement using your image and story as a talking point—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re gonna ask if that bothers me,” Juno huffed.

“I would never,” Ransom scoffed. “The first rule of journalism is never to ask a question with a yes or no answer, especially not to an interviewee who doesn’t want to talk in the first place.”

“I want to talk,” Juno shot back, a little offended.

“Lovely. Over drinks or dinner?” Ransom grinned. “I’ll pay for either.”

“You sly bastard,” Juno snorted.

“Well, this sly bastard would like to know how exactly you feel about being associated with the mutant equality, or rather, pro-vigilantism, movement,” Ransom chuckled, reaching for his pen.

“Look, not everybody dumb enough to get stuck in my situation wants to be a vigilante about it,” Juno huffed. “A couple people did what they could to help their corners of the world and the government spat on them for being different.”

“And you don’t think of yourself as a vigilante?”

“Do most vigilantes have offices?”

“Then, what, pray tell, would you call private detective work?”

Juno opened his mouth for an angry, or even correcting response, but even after so few minutes in his office, he could tell Ransom was merely trying to get a rise out of him. Instead, he took a deep breath.

“I just think it’s shitty to assume anybody with any kind of ability is some kind of vigilante,” Juno huffed. “Came out of a good place, but it doesn’t fix any problems and punishes all the wrong people. A telekinetic reaching for something on a high shelf at a grocery store isn’t being a vigilante, but with the law, they’re sure as hell being a criminal. And even the ones who are actually overstepping wouldn’t have to if we had decent law enforcement.”

“I assume you mean the HCPD.”

“I’ll save you some trouble. I’m not going to talk about the HCPD,” Juno cut him off before he could say another word.

“Well, I suppose that’s all of that, then,” Ransom shrugged. “I have a few more questions regarding your current career, and then that’ll be all. I’m afraid we’ve come to the end of the moral questions.”

Juno raised an eyebrow.

“You sound upset,” he noted. His eyes flickered to Ransom’s pen, narrowing upon seeing the top had never been clicked in the first place.

“Well, detective, I see you’ve found me out,” Ransom sighed, voice drowning in melodrama. “Can you truly blame me? You’re rather handsome when you’re like this.”

“What, political?” Juno snorted.

“Morally outraged,” Peter chuckled. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you like this some other time, if you would be amicable.”

“Can’t. Ethics and all that,” Juno sighed.

“I’m not a client, am I? And once we finish our interview, you won’t have any kind of bearings on my writing,” Ransom smiled. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t meet some time after all of this is over.”

Juno briefly considered the part of his mind that kept him from making bad decisions. However, with Peter Ransom grinning at him like he was counting the inches between his lips and Juno’s neck, the sensible part of him stood no chance.

“I’ve had clients buy me lunch before, if you’re that interested,” he offered, thankful for the shivering chill of the office air conditioner to keep his cheeks from going hot.

“Are you implying something? I wouldn’t want to be pressuring you towards anything untoward, detective,” Ransom grinned. At that point, Juno had long since given up on pretending he didn’t notice the way Ransom eyed his neck like a thief sizing up a diamond necklace.

“You said you can’t ‘buy me lunch’ or anything until after you’re done interrogating me, right?”

“Interrogation is a strong word, detective. I’m merely trying to know you better, Juno,” Ransom mused, flashing that vulpine grin like he knew exactly how Juno’s heart and breath and gut all jolted in tandem. “I must say, I quite like what I’ve learned already. Perhaps we ought to elongate our intercourse—pardon me, I meant to say ‘discourse’—after all.”

Juno swallowed down a sputter.

“Would you find that agreeable?”

“Say, Ransom,” Juno chuckled. “How quick do you think you can get through this interview?”

“As quick as you want, detective,” Ransom beamed back, flipping to a new page of his notebook.

It should have bothered Juno far more that he hadn’t written down a thing the entire time. However, with his common sense slipping and his heart pounding, he decided that if Peter Ransom was a mistake, he was a mistake Juno desperately wanted to make.

Juno’s only regret when Ransom stood was that he could no longer let his gaze linger on the way Peter perched upon the office chair like a throne, his spine as straight as a scepter and his coat clinging to his shoulders like a robe. He smiled as if he could do away with the world with a snap of his fingers. If he had worn a ring, Juno was sure he would have been the kind of person to hold it out and expect a bow and a kiss to the gemstone.

However, before Ransom could do much more than stride forward, Juno caught him by the tie, giving him enough of a tug down to get him on eye level a few too many inches from his lips for his liking.

“It’s rude to try to kiss a lady without buying him lunch first,” Juno chuckled. “I’ve got a couple hours. What do you say about a coffee, and then a rendezvous back here?”

“A rendezvous at your office, or on your desk?”

“We’ll see if you’re that lucky, loverboy.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey all!! this one's a bit closer to a t, but keep an eye on the content warnings!!
> 
> Content warnings for implied sexual content, referenced x-men style mutant bigotry, food mention
> 
> As a side note, I know madame rossignol is spelled with and without an e throughout the scripts. im going with the e for aesthetic purposes and ill die on this hill

“That was—fuck,” Juno breathed, glad of Ransom’s laugh for covering him while he caught his breath.

“Rather observant of you, detective,” Ransom teased.

“Shut up.”

Peter took a seat upon the edge of the desk at Juno’s side, and though the two had long since established that they had few barriers when it came to touch, every steadying brush of his fingertips upon Juno’s waist was light and questioning. Juno nearly felt the need to verbally affirm that Ransom was allowed to steady him.

When Ransom seemed to be happy with his work of finding a comfortable position in which to keep Juno upright while still holding him close, he let his lips fall back to their former spot upon Juno’s neck, worshipping a light mark just underneath his ear.

“Do you treat every habitual criminal you interview like this?” Juno snorted, though Ransom’s reply was merely an absentminded hum against his neck. 

“Weren’t you pardoned?” Ransom paused to ask, words fluttering all too sweetly against Juno’s ear.

“Shut up,” Juno huffed. “You make out with every interviewee’s neck?”

“I would rather not ruin your lipstick before a meeting, Juno.”

“Whatever. The case isn’t going to go to hell just because you ruined my makeup,” Juno whined.

“And regretfully, I don’t have time to do so,” Peter chuckled.

He pulled his lips away after a final parting kiss, a hand still trailing at the side of Juno’s face until it seemed even Ransom couldn’t come up with an excuse not to rummage through his long discarded coat in search of makeup wipes.

Ransom did away with his own lipstick first, even if it had somehow barely smeared. With his head still a little fuzzy, his heart racing, and his pupils blown, it seemed all Juno could manage to do was let his gaze linger where his lips wished to be while he tried and failed to sit up a little straighter on the edge of his desk.

“I just want you to know that you’re formally uninvited from taking lunch with me ever again,” Juno snorted.

“Beg pardon?”

“I’ll never have time to eat,” he teased.

“Oh, do be quiet,” Ransom huffed, though it was without any anger.

The cool press of the makeup wipe against his neck sent a shiver running its fingertips down his spine. He would have been embarrassed if Ransom hadn’t laughed, leaning forward to press a kiss to Juno’s cheek before returning to his attempt to cover up what he could of their mutual lapse in professionalism.

“Someone’s sensitive,” Ransom teased.

“Whose fault is that?”

“Yours, if I’m remembering,” Peter smiled. “You said that your turtleneck would cover everything.”

“Whatever,” Juno huffed. “Thanks for buying me lunch. And uh. Staying a while.”

“Anytime,” Peter chuckled.

By the time Ransom pulled away, Juno could have sworn something within the light of the room had changed. He shot a glance up, but no bulb seemed to have flickered. It must have merely been a trick of the changing light from the blind-streaked window, but regardless of the cause, Ransom’s hair seemed to be a definite black, whereas it had been a dark brunet mere moments before.

Ransom must have caught Juno’s staring, for he chuckled.

“Is there something on my face, detective?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Juno returned a little too quickly.

He wanted more than anything to trust Peter Ransom, whose presence over a meal made old friends like Jack Daniels seem like bitter company. His smile spoke of promises and the memory of soft lips right below his jaw and strong hands gripping at the lapels of his coat. Ransom was charming and dazzling and as quick as a criminal.

However, Ransom also wore a coat no starting journalist could possibly afford. He hadn’t so much as clicked his pen through the entire interview, nor had he jotted down a single note. Juno had been a decent enough detective to notice when the slip of paper bearing his number had been snuck into one of the pockets of his pencil skirt, but he had a feeling an average person wouldn’t have taken note. 

Peter Ransom had the charm of a swindler and the hands of a pickpocket. Perhaps Juno would have been more worried if he didn’t speak in honeyed words and find some way to make Juno feel like the traitorous organ beneath his breastbone was about to burst. Perhaps Juno would have been more worried if Ransom didn’t work magic with his lips, in speech or otherwise. Perhaps Juno would have been more worried if his mile-wide soft spot hadn’t been all too happy to make an excuse for him.

With his chest still rising and falling and Ransom still making tender work of the last of the makeup stains, Juno sighed. He really needed to stop wearing his heart between his legs.

Of course, Peter Ransom, the fantasy-sent gentleman in the form of a shitty reporter had to come and make that difficult.

Juno hadn’t meant to sigh when Ransom pulled away. He felt the tips of his ears go hot, but Ransom merely chuckled as he helped Juno back to his feet.

“Missing me already, dear detective?” Ransom mused. “I haven’t even left you yet.”

“Well,” Juno huffed. “You’re about to.”

“I’m afraid I have a rather important phone call due very soon,” Peter lamented. 

“Way to spoil the afterglow,” Juno snorted. “Aren’t you gonna cuddle with me and call me beautiful or something?”

“Well, I suppose that’ll just have to wait for the next time I buy you a meal,” Ransom chuckled. “Dinner, perhaps?”

“Maybe,” Juno smiled. “I don’t see why you can’t cuddle me on my desk.”

“Dear,” Peter chided.

“What?” Juno huffed.

“I’m afraid I have an exceedingly urgent phone call to make, and I’ve regretfully put it off as long as possible. I hate to hurry out the door, but, well, I’m sure you can check your pocket on your own,” Ransom grinned. Juno tried to pretend his heart didn’t sink when he strolled around to the other end of the desk.

Before Peter could leave him entirely, he reached across the table for Juno’s hand and brought it to his lips, soft and tender and reverent. It felt more as if he were blessing the back of his hand to pay tribute to his patron goddess than saying farewell at the closing of their rendezvous.

The sensible part of Juno that regretted picking up the phone and letting someone he hardly knew wrap his hands around his heart and squeeze said it was best to forget that he had ever used Peter Ransom as a brief encounter to fill a void in his chest he usually preferred to fill with work or stress or alcohol.

The rest of him was far too concerned with the way Ransom’s hand squeezed his in farewell, still seeming to trail for hours, even as Peter turned to leave. 

Juno still had a million questions and confessions and words of interrogation banging their fists upon the back of his mind, though none of them became clear until Ransom had long since left. He stood and rushed to the door like some kind of lovestruck idiot, though, upon poking his head into the hall, he caught and lost a last scrap of hope when an elderly gentleman in the same coat as Ransom peered his way.

“In some kind of hurry, detective?” He croaked in a voice that was nearly familiar.

“You haven’t seen a—”

“Tall, handsome fellow?” The man cut him off.

“Yeah.”

“Running to a phone booth last I saw him,” he shrugged, then hurried on his way with a slight limp Juno could have sworn wasn’t there before.

Juno sighed, turned back into his office, and did what he could to make the formerly cluttered, now haphazardly un-cluttered desk presentable for his afternoon client. He really wished the work were a little less mindless than reorganizing files.

The simple motions of stacking papers back onto his desk and pushing in all the drawers paired perfectly with the broiling of the overly analytical thoughts that sat hot and sticky in his brain. Every time he tried to think too kindly of Ransom for too long, they would chortle some dark little detail about the way Ransom’s face had gone stiff when asked about his career or anything to do with his past.

Peter Ransom had one of those presences that had a bitter aftertaste. As sweet as his words had been in the flesh, honeyed and dripping from his wine red lips, the thick smoke of his voice hung a little more bitterly into the air in his absence. It seemed, without the sharp curve of his jaw or the dark glistening of his eyes, Ransom could do nothing to defend himself from the part of Juno that wanted to tear his every closed door off their hinges, just to ensure he hadn’t made some kind of grave mistake.

That was his problem. He hadn’t had the stomach to work in a pair since Benten, and even then, the two of them were supposed to be one singular ‘Super Steel.’ Anytime he looked for a partner of any sort, he just had to pick away at the details until he found something about them that justified being alone again.

Juno caught his mind running in ragged circles and took a deep breath. Statistically, he was sure he had bedded someone worse than Peter Ransom in his life. That warm and fuzzy feeling in his chest had to just be the afterglow fizzling out like the dying flicker of a street lamp.

Before he could spend too long agonizing over the fact that the sensation had yet to leave, a knock at the door sent him careening out of his own thoughts. He shoved the last of the papers into a haphazard pile atop his desk and all but climbed over to get back into his office chair.

“You have an appointment?” Juno called, a little too proud to consider his tone entirely winded.

“Yes, for Madame Rossignol?”

Juno checked his calendar for the day, even if it sounded right. He ignored the fact that there was definitely a shoe scuff on it from his attempt to launch himself over his desk.

“Yeah, sounds right,” Juno answered just in time for the door to open.

Upon first glance, Rossignol appeared no different from any other white-collar professional. Her suit was clean and pressed, a smooth, slate gray appropriate for anything from a press conference to a funeral. However, it took no more than a quick glance to learn everything Juno needed to know about her.

While the suit was unassuming in color and design, it bore the labels of a brand so expensive it made his wallet ache, while the slight hunch of her stance and narrowing of her eyes at any piece of text around the room spoke of late nights and studying and the kind of dark circles even strong cups of coffee couldn’t bat away. If Juno had to guess, she worked some kind of scientific job, and she was paid very handsomely for it.

“Juno Steel, correct?” She started upon taking the seat at which he gestured.

If Ransom had sat in that chair like a throne, she seemed to wish the leather would close in on either side of her and swallow her whole.

“Yeah, that’s what it says on the sign,” Juno snorted. “You said you wanted to talk about security, right?”

“Yes,” Rossignol confirmed. “I own a somewhat sizable technology company, and we’re hosting a press event in a few week’s time to display our new product’s prototype. I was hoping we might be able to use you for some form of security.”

“I’m not exactly one to turn down a job, but how do you think one guy’s gonna cover a whole event like that?” Juno asked, pausing to glance up from his notebook.

“Well, we will be hiring traditional security, but I think it would be helpful to have someone undercover,” Rossignol explained. “There’s always our competitors to worry about. I trust my security to drag anyone unruly away, but I’d rather have a private eye to solve the problem before it can start.”

“So what do I need to know? Anyone you’re worried about in particular?”

“Mr. Steel,” Rossignol began again. “I assume you are opposed to the government’s imprisonment of all those who visibly act on their powers?”

“What the hell does—”

“My new technology may very well be an end to that policy,” Rossignol cut him off. “I trust you more than many others to know a government agent. Besides, having you at the event would be rather good press, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m not here just to play PR for you,” Juno returned, perhaps a little too coldly. He couldn’t find it in him to regret it.

“You don’t have to play PR,” Rossignol quickly assured him. “I can’t force you to do anything, sir, but I would rather my expert security for the evening be someone with a little more knowledge of the kind of person who might want me dead. Besides that, I suspect a few of my rivals may be trying to get their hands on my technology as well.”

“Yep. Got it. Anybody who sees me and pulls a gun is probably the kind of person who doesn’t want you around either,” Juno thought aloud, jotting it down.

“Exactly. My apologies for taking your afternoon to talk through politics and hypotheticals. I hired an associate of mine to research your opinions on the matter, but it seems he underperformed,” Rossignol continued, her voice nearly shedding its professionalism in favor of something that carried the sterile chill of a lab. She paused for a moment, pressing a business card into Juno’s hand. “Call this number to discuss any sort of payment, but don’t haggle my secretary.”

Juno raised an eyebrow.

“It sounds like you need me there in particular, Rossignol. What’s stopping me from putting the price as high as I want?” He mused. “You don’t walk into an office wearing all designer and expect a lady not to notice.”

“This technology’s going to do a lot of good for people like you,” Rossignol insisted. Had her voice not gone venomous, Juno would have almost believed her. “They might even let you get married.”

“Never been the domestic type,” Juno all but snapped.

Rossignol hadn’t seemed to notice, already leaving the room.

“Call the number for blueprints, cameras, whatever you need,” she explained with hardly a glance over her shoulder. “You won’t have to hear from me again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up i don't condone 1) being an evil scientist (but i do condone being a hot evil scientist) and 2) bad journalism jeezy creezy nothing like the good old fashioned reporting technique of "bed your interviewees" come the hell on Ransom you can do better than this he didn't even ask how to spell Juno's name
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below!!
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the plot thickens!!
> 
> Content warnings for alcohol mention, food

Juno had taken stranger cases in his life, but those, at least, had been cases. 

Between the blueprints and the information vacuum surrounding the machines, it seemed Rossignol had handed him a mystery without any way to solve it. Every potential rival or branch of the government that might have even heard of Rossignol’s enterprise was one he had to dig out of interviews and a near interrogation of her secretary. 

Rossignol herself stayed as hands-off as possible, only giving him messages through her employees. In fact, Juno hadn’t been told to expect a black-tie event until mere days before, giving him barely enough time to rent a tuxedo and figure out a decent makeup look. 

Nothing about the case made any sense. Rossignol sold the closed-doors press conference as some kind of classy unveiling of the next great world changing project, and yet, she banned cameras and kept her list of guests to a tight three dozen and a plus one for each. Juno wasn’t too proud not to check the list for Ransom three or four times before deciding that just looking at a piece of paper for a few hours wouldn’t make it produce a familiar name.

Even the blueprints proved to be an enigma. While the showroom was to be expected, a larger room lay just above and behind it. If Juno had to guess, it had the approximate dimensions of an airplane hangar, though not a single camera lay inside or pointed at any of the doors. Nearby, Rossignol’s so-called laboratory seemed to be more a twisting maze of halls and empty square rooms than a proper workspace. Frankly, it looked like what the HCPD would call a textbook secondary location.

The headquarters were as much of a mystery as the one he had been paid to solve on site. WIth hardly a decent lead on any of the reporters, suspected rivals, or government agents attempting to steal Rossignol’s technology, Juno merely resigned to studying the case as much as he could beforehand and then making his appearance on the day of the press conference.

At the very least, Rossignol had gone to significant pains to ensure the event wasn’t boring. 

Although Juno felt like a kid in his mother’s oversized clothes stuffed into that tuxedo, he couldn’t exactly complain when catching his reflection out of the corner of his eye. If he squinted, he could almost see what Ransom had seen in him when he fixed him with that obsidian-dark stare.

“Champagne, ma’am?” A server asked before Juno could get too lost in his own reflection.

Juno’s eyes narrowed when he turned to regard the gentleman. The man’s stance was a little too haughty and his face a little too mischievous to entirely convince Juno of his innocence, though of what he couldn’t say. After a few blinks, Juno decided that the strange familiarity of the man was merely a trick of the gilded light from above.

“I’ll pass,” he returned. “Hey, before you go—you haven’t seen a reporter called Peter Ransom around anywhere, have you?”

If Juno were a little prouder, he wouldn’t have asked. However, he knew he would regret it if he didn’t give it a shot, especially at a party with a drowsy band and another hour until the speeches actually began. 

Juno couldn’t exactly drink on the job and he hadn’t prepared the very real possibility of being incapacitated if he tried the crab cakes, so instead, he focused on finding his entertainment elsewhere. He almost hoped some rival or government agent would rear their head or try to sneak past him, just for the sake of something to do.

“I don’t believe I know a gentleman by that name,” the server returned with a curt nod, going about his business before Juno could open his mouth again. 

Juno silently cursed himself for getting his hopes up. Given Ransom’s ability to follow the instructions of his editors, Juno was fairly sure he might have lost his job entirely since they had last had a phone call over lunch. Juno had spent the next few hours of work trying to pretend it didn’t make his knees go weak when Ransom called him ‘dear’ for the first time, but that was of no matter.

At the end of the day, Ransom had overstepped the line of impartiality by a mile or two. Juno had done the same, but he certainly couldn’t lose his job if he was self employed.

Juno didn’t realize he’d been chewing his lip half to death until he caught sight of himself in the decorative mirror again. He would have let his gaze linger if not for the all too familiar face over his shoulder.

“Ransom?” He sputtered.

Ransom greeted him with a kiss to the back of his hand.

“The very same, my dear detective,” Peter smiled. “I heard you had been asking around for me.”

“Little surprised to see you here,” Juno continued. “Didn’t see you on the list. Are you someone’s plus one, or what?”

“Yours, as far as I’m concerned,” Ransom returned, flashing his million dollar smile.

“That’s the same suit the server had on,” Juno thought aloud. “You snuck in.”

“Juno, I would never,” Ransom all but gasped. “I just think privatizing information to such an extent would be unethical.”

“You’ve broken at least three laws just being here. Where’d you get the suit?”

“Oh, I merely mugged the first server I saw in my size,” Ransom shrugged. His grin refused to budge. “Is it so unlikely that the uniform may be incredibly easy to replicate or to find at a local store?”

Juno huffed.

“I don’t know if you’re here to cause any trouble, that’s all,” he sighed.

“Trouble? I would never.”

Juno rolled his eyes.

“You’ve been causing me a hell of a lot of trouble. Can’t think straight with you around,” he grimaced. “I can’t ever figure you out, you know that? You know what it does to a guy who figures out stuff for a living when he can’t figure someone out?”

Ransom merely laughed, and any anger that had begun to rise within his chest firmly fizzled out.

Juno didn’t see why they couldn’t spend the evening together, especially if his job was to keep an eye on suspicious activity. 

Regardless, a part of him ached when Peter reached for and squeezed his hand, rattling off a long train of flirtations and compliments over every piece of jewelry or facet of his outfit. If only he could separate that twisting ball of wire in his chest reserved for Peter Ransom into a few different tangled knots. 

On the one hand, Ransom was obviously suspicious of something. He went about his day with the ease of a man who had escaped the law once and would happily do so again, confessing to crimes with a joke and a smile and going on about his conversations like the matter had merely been the weather. 

On the other hand, he was sweet and chivalrous and had a nasty habit of making Juno feel like tomorrow was worth showing up for.

Perhaps Ransom was merely a good actor, playing into an angle at which it became far easier to play Juno Steel. Perhaps Juno was an idiot. That didn’t change the fact that a pair of tensions choked through the air whenever they happened to occupy the same room. If he were a better detective, maybe Juno would’ve done away with the more distracting of the two.

“Juno, are you even listening to me?” Ransom huffed.

“What?”

Ransom sighed.

“I was telling you that you look positively divine in your tuxedo,” Ransom chuckled. “Now I know I have your attention again, what brings a lady such as yourself to an event such as this?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Juno laughed mirthlessly, leaning against the wall.

“Oh, my dearest detective, you mustn’t be like this,” Peter lamented. “I know you might be expected not to tell me, but then again, how would I possibly know you haven’t broken into the party like a certain other gentleman I know?”

“I was hired to be here,” Juno returned tersely.

“And how do you know I wasn’t?” Ransom returned. “You have no need to take such a suspicious tone.”

“Look,” Juno huffed. “How many of my ethical rules are you gonna make me break?”

“Detective,” Ransom pretended to be aghast. “I didn’t make you do anything. If anyone crossed a boundary of professionalism, it was myself, which I would apologize for if you hadn’t taken the offer of my phone number at face value.”

“Fine,” Juno groaned. “I’m supposed to keep an eye on anyone who looks suspicious.”

“Is that why you’re spending this lovely evening with me then, detective?” Ransom continued, though his teasing smile had yet to fade. “You could have your pick of ladies or gentlemen here, you know.”

“Or I could do my goddamn job,” Juno snorted. “Just because they have a band and a dance floor doesn’t mean it’s some kind of gala.”

“Well, if I’m such a suspicious figure, I don’t see why you couldn’t spend your evening with me,” Ransom suggested. “Perhaps on that dance floor you mentioned.”

Juno rolled his eyes.

“Sure.”

“Was that a yes?” Ransom all but beamed.

Peter Ransom was the kind of man who wore a practiced smile well. He wore a real one better. Hope flickered in those dark and lovely eyes for a moment, and all Juno could do was swallow and pretend his heart didn’t leap at the sight of a crack in Ransom’s facade.

“Why the hell not?” Juno finally conceded. With Ransom mocking a bow and sweeping his hand up to his lips for a kiss, Juno doubted there was a person in the world who might be able to say no to that.

On the one hand, Juno could satisfy the uncomfortable, itching part of himself that burned with shame at the thought of their initial meeting by knowing Ransom couldn’t start any trouble while he was within Juno’s line of sight. Whether he was a government agent or a competitor’s spy or some crook of a different shade didn’t matter so long as he was occupied and Juno was the one occupying him. He didn’t have to entirely trust Rossignol. He didn’t have to entirely trust Ransom. If he could just keep them away from one another, he could collect his cash and wash his hands of the entire altercation.

On the other hand, the stupid, soft part of him that whispered useless sympathies and ached at the echoing loneliness of a one-man office wanted to memorize the way Peter Ransom’s gloved hand felt in his own. He didn’t like to listen to that part often, for it had been the one that still stung in bitter, choking waves that had somehow managed to lessen over the course of two decades without Ben. It had been the part of him that always coerced him into trying again, only for the friendship or relationship or engagement to go sour and splash back in his face.

However he felt about his soft spot didn’t change the fact that it bloomed, warm and sweet and heady in his chest. It also didn’t change the fact that a gentler smile than usual crossed Ransom’s face as he led him to the floor, waiting for the band to play a slower tune.

“I can’t say why, but I feel I always knew you would be a good dancer,” Ransom chuckled as they swayed to the tune of a mournful trumpet.

“We’re not doing much,” Juno snorted.

It was true. The tempo of the song and the presence of the other couples on the floor merely suggested the two of them hold each other close and barely move as the band ebbed and flowed out a gentle slowdance. Ransom still took the occasional flourish in the music to spin Juno around a little too fast, catching him with a grin before he could spin out of control.

“I think there’s a certain artistic value to being a good dancer,” Peter mused. “Something about the way you can make an onlooker or your partner feel. If I’m being truthful, Juno, you’re making me feel quite a lot.”

“Shut up,” Juno chuckled, though he meant it, for he worried if Ransom said another word, his already traitorous heart was going to make him do something awful.

“It’s strange to think I would enjoy something so chaste,” Ransom chuckled, leaning a little closer to let the words flutter against Juno’s ear. It took all of Juno’s resolve not to freeze on the spot. “If I’m being entirely honest with you, I’m seldom hopeful I ever see such connections ever again. And yet, here we are. We’ve met again, and I must say, your company ages like a fine wine.”

“Save it for the chapel,” Juno snorted.

It was hard to express any of the true feeling in his chest with one of Ransom’s hands on his waist, those long fingers pulling him no closer than they needed to, and yet, providing the kind of firm and protective pressure that made his heart skip a few too many beats for his liking. The room was merely a blur of a crowd and the soft, gold light from above, for Juno’s world had condensed down to the few inches between their chests and the smell of Ransom’s cologne going to his head.

When the music came to an end, Juno couldn’t remember when he had become breathless. He didn’t have long to ruminate on it, for Ransom kissed him, still holding him with all the close tenderness of their swaying number before.

“Hey,” Juno breathed when they finally broke, his spinning head only grounding itself on the feeling of Ransom’s hands, one on the small of his back and the other on the side of his face.

“Hey,” Ransom repeated, though he chuckled through the word.

Juno almost didn’t recognize Ransom’s smile. It was a little softer and a little sweeter than the hungry grin that had undone him from across his office the other day, though Juno had to admit, he liked this variation of Peter Ransom quite a bit more.

“You, uh—” Juno sputtered. “You kiss good.”

“I could say the same for you, detective,” Ransom chuckled. “Though I’m afraid I’ve developed quite the horrible memory. Would you kiss me again so I don’t forget the feeling?”

“You’re a moron,” Juno snorted, though anything Peter could have replied was lost between their lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am not immune to dance scenes in every single fic i write forever
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or i'll break rules of ethical journalism with your mom
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh oh sisters
> 
> Content warnings for gun violence, betrayal, mentions of murder, x-men typical anti-mutant bigotry, minor alcohol, attempted murder

“So, are you ever gonna tell me what the hell you’re doing here, or am I gonna have to put you on my suspect list?” Juno asked over the glass Ransom had retrieved from the tray of the nearest waiter.

“To good fortune,” Ransom chuckled, clinking his own champagne against Juno’s, which didn’t budge as he waited for a decent answer. “Well, I’m an employee of Madame Rossignol.”

“Really?” Juno returned flatly, taking a drink.

“I’m not exactly the most established in my field, so I took a little freelance work. I wasn’t given all the details of my assignment when she asked me to interview you about your stance on Project Gemini and the subsequent legislation when that all crashed and burned,” Ransom returned evenly, leaning against the wall. “I assume I’ll be thoroughly fired by the time we speak again.”

“For what?”

“Asking less than half of the questions she wanted me to ask and taking no notes,” Peter shrugged. “I thought the questions were invasive and rude, and I overrode her assignment with my own judgement.”

“Like what?” Juno asked, an eyebrow raised.

“She wanted far more details about organizers behind the mutant equality movement including names, addresses, et cetera, but I was so unnerved by the tone of the questions that I ruled them off my list entirely,” Ransom continued. “She also wanted far more of your personal details than I was comfortable asking.”

“You were comfortable—you know—but not asking me for my address?”

“I didn’t think the question was in good company,” Ransom sighed. “I don’t know how you feel about Rossignol. I promise you, I am not attempting to twist your arm one way or another, but I would be wary of her if I were you. She seemed convinced you had some sort of political knowledge you weren’t letting on. One of the questions was an hour-by-hour breakdown of your daily schedule, for heaven’s sake.”

“You have some sort of record of the original questions, or am I just supposed to believe you?”

Ransom’s sigh turned exasperated.

“I’m trying to warn you of something, Juno,” he huffed. “Interrogate me if you like, but that doesn’t change the fact that I need you to trust me. I don’t know how long you are going to be under Rossignol’s employ, but I doubt she has good intentions for people like the two of us.”

Juno raised an eyebrow.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Ransom didn’t respond, merely dragging Juno to the wall and turning so his face would be hidden from the majority of the room, and if Juno was remembering correctly, all of the hall’s security cameras.

Juno opened his mouth to object, but he froze upon seeing Ransom’s face had changed entirely. Even if his impatient glare was the same, the structure had morphed into the face of the waiter Juno had spoken to earlier in the evening. Juno sputtered some kind of response but found himself rendered silent once more when the waiter’s face shifted into that of the old man who he could have sworn wore the same coat as Ransom.

By the time he pulled away, his face had returned to Peter Ransom’s, though by then, Juno was almost certain that the face was not his own.

“One habitual criminal to another,” Ransom smiled, and for once, Juno could not take refuge in the familiarity of the expression. It died before Juno could spend too long worrying about that. “I didn’t end up in Rossignol’s employ for honest reasons. I doubt her intentions with you are any better. Either wash your hands of this enterprise entirely and ensure she knows as little about you as possible or do what you can to get in her way.”

“So you were the one she hired me to stop, huh?” Juno thought aloud, shaking his head in disbelief.

“I’ll have to assume so,” Ransom sighed.

“You got any kind of plans you wanna give me a heads up about?”

Ransom’s smile bloomed once more, though this time, a sadness tugged at the corners of it.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I assume this is our crossroads. In approximately five minutes, I’m going to leave this room to find Rossignol and give her a final chance to convince me I haven’t sold my soul by opening my wallet to her pay.”

“And if I try to stop you?”

“Juno,” Ransom sighed. Juno wished the name wouldn’t mourn its way from his lips like a lover’s eulogy. “I can’t make you trust me, and I can’t make you refuse to do your job, as much as I can try. I don’t know if you’ll believe me when I say there’s a greater good here I’m intending to protect.”

Juno laughed coldly.

“Greater good, huh? Heard that one before. Killed my brother, actually. Ruined my goddamn life.”

“Juno, please,” Ransom protested, furthering his entreatance when he seized Juno by the wrists. Juno yanked his hand away.

“This isn’t the goddamn honeymoon suite,” he hissed. 

“She’s going to try to kill people, Juno,” Ransom continued. “I don’t know what I can do to make you believe me. I’m not the kind of person people like to trust.”

“Wonder why,” Juno snorted mirthlessly. “Was it the seduction or the open betrayal that tipped you off?”

“Juno, I don’t know what all her machines do, but I promise you, she didn’t just want your information so she could hire you,” Ransom pressed. “Do what you must. If you want to chase me down or arrest me when I leave, I don’t think I could stop you if I wanted to. If you believe anything I’ve said tonight, believe that lives are at stake, yours and mine included.”

“What do you know about Rossignol that the rest of us don’t?”

Ransom sighed.

“I don’t have anything concrete.”

“So you’re going to what—assassinate her? Off of ‘nothing concrete?’” Juno tried his best not to spit.

“I can’t connect everything I do have, nor do I have time to recount it to you now,” Ransom returned, voice just barely beginning to crack. “I have enough to suspect she intends the both of us harm. I’m merely going to try and talk her down from her position, but I suspect she’s been on to my investigation of her for some while. That must be why she hired you to ensure I never get to corner her in a private place.”

Juno opened his mouth to reply, but the plea that had creased Ransom’s brow fell away, leaving only bitterness.

“Of course you don’t believe me,” he huffed. “I was a fool to think you would.”

“Ransom—” Juno started.

“I can’t even keep a consistent face, Juno,” Ransom sighed. “Most people, let alone law enforcement, would take the word of a convict over my own. This isn’t my face, you know. Peter Ransom isn’t even my name, though if you’d rather call me it, I won’t stop you.”

Juno swallowed. As much as he wanted to suspect Ransom, or whoever the hell he was, of manipulation, the information had been handed over so freely that he didn’t have it in him to be entirely critical. A long, long life of people throwing him towards danger just because he could physically recover from it ached in the back of his mind when he thought too long of distrusting Ransom for a genetic ability he couldn’t control.

His story spoke of a life turned brutal and opportunities turned down because of traitorous nucleotides, hinting at crime and strife and a little more vigilante justice than Rossignol wanted to see in the world. Juno was sure he was a criminal, if not on the technicality of actually using his abilities, off the quiet whisperings of his story.

However, most people were sure Juno was a criminal too. He swallowed. He tried to meet Ransom’s eyes, those lovely, shining things that he could no longer be certain were real at all. 

Before he could reply, Ransom glanced up at the clock and winced.

“I need to go, dear,” he murmured, though he paused halfway through his rushed hand squeeze of a farewell, as if a thousand things sat just behind his parted lips. Instead of speaking, however, he stood in silence, then shook his head and turned to take off down a maintenance hallway.

“Ransom, wait!” He called, his assignment be damned.

As much as his chest had ached, sweetly or not, at Ransom’s presence for the evening, he couldn’t ignore the fact that he had been paid to prevent the very thing Ransom was doing. He could decide whether or not he wanted to go through with stopping Peter at a later time. For now, he was supposed to keep his eye on the situation, and the situation had just ducked into a hidden staff door.

Thankfully, the set of keys Rossignol’s secretary had sent him did the trick to get through the door, though he had to force a series of keys into the lock, swearing at his shaking hands and the unyielding metal and Ransom, for taking off so quickly. Time was bleeding from the clock as the hour of the speeches and the first reveals of Rossignol’s machine grew near, and he couldn’t afford to lose a second fighting a door.

His memory of the blueprints was far more reliable than the keys. He tried to force himself not to worry too much about the utter lack of cameras in the staff halls and in the room where the footsteps from up ahead seemed to lead, but as a detective, it seemed worrying about everything came with the job. It certainly didn’t help that the lights above the hallway were bare and flickering, shaking the concrete walls with vertigo and threatening to make Juno’s vision spin.

His only guide through the labyrinth of passages were the jogging steps from up ahead, and even that sound seemed to swim and swirl in the mass of gray and bone white light. For as much effort as Rossignol had put into making the rest of the headquarters seem like the epitome of clean, cool, and minimalistic modern technology, the hallways could have been pulled out of any time in the past sixty years.

“Ransom, wait!” Juno called again as he ducked around another corner.

Ransom’s footsteps merely sped up, clapping and echoing as loud as ever. Juno swallowed down a frustrated groan and continued his pursuit, uncaring of his screaming thighs and calves and lungs as the chase grew longer and longer through the halls. If he had to guess, the twisting, winding path up to wherever Ransom seemed to be taking him was going to take the entire ten minutes before the speeches began. 

He tried to pretend that worried him less than it did, just for the sake of whatever kind feelings he was still stupid enough to hold for Ransom.

When he finally turned the last corner, the door ahead of him was still closing. However, he couldn’t help but notice that Ransom didn’t lock it behind him.

“Rossignol,” Ransom panted from the other side of the room. 

Juno recognized the voice was Ransom’s, rather than the higher pitch of the waiter. It seemed, somewhere between the mouth of the tunnels and the end, Ransom had reverted back to the baseline face he used when talking to Juno.

“What are you doing here?” Rossignol gasped, taken aback. “I hired—”

“Detective Steel’s fine,” Ransom cut her off. “I haven’t laid a hand on him.”

“My cameras would say otherwise, but I thought he was trying to distract you,” she sputtered.

“Well,” Ransom swallowed. “That doesn’t change my point. When did you intend on telling me that your invention would see me dead?”

The silence rang through the tunnels with the potency of a gong strike.

“Excuse me?”

“Why didn’t you tell me that your invention was going to kill people?” Ransom repeated, voice cold. “I’ve seen your storage rooms. I’ve seen your tests and computers, in fact. If you and your company didn’t hold my life in your hands, you would have an actual mutant murder to worry about.”

“Are you threatening me, Mister Nureyev?”

The sound of the blade and Rossignol’s gasp were both loud enough to cover the sound of the door cracking open, just enough for Juno to catch the sight of Ransom’s blade to Rossignol’s neck and his teeth bared in a snarl.

“You haven’t answered me.”

“There are casualties to any kind of population control system,” she protested. “This will do more good than harm.”

“Who will it kill, Madame Rossignol?” Ransom hissed. “Me? Juno?”

“Only the right people,” Rossignol returned, stumbling backwards enough that she managed to get her neck away from Ransom’s knife.

Ransom didn’t pursue her, merely seething. Whether or not he had intended for his features to sharpen or his spine to grow straighter Juno couldn’t tell. Whatever suspicions he once had towards Ransom’s mannerisms or his too-perfect smile were nothing in comparison to the genuine fear that bloomed in his chest at the sight of Ransom’s practiced grip upon his knife.

“The right people,” Ransom repeated, shaking his head incredulously. “Is that what you’re going to go out there and tell all those reporters? That your machine is going to kill the right people?”

“I think you’ve overestimated what the public thinks of people like you,” she hissed.

“Oh, that does remind me—did you mean to put my information on the list of those to be killed on sight by your machines?”

Rossignol didn’t reply, her eyes blown wide and distinctly elsewhere. Juno’s stomach dropped when he realized she was looking directly at him.

“Steel,” she pretended to gasp in a mockery of the faint, stuttering performance she had worn in his office. “I hope you didn’t catch too much of this conversation.”

The door swung the rest of the way open with Juno’s light push, its creak seeming all the louder in the dead silent room that appeared to be some kind of backstage area. A quick glance around told him that it seemed to lack any kind of security cameras.

“Juno—”

“I caught enough of it to know I don’t want your money,” Juno swallowed.

“Pity,” Rossignol breathed. “It seems you won’t be needing it either.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Ransom lunged for her outstretched arm. Juno might have caught a better look if his gaze hadn’t been focused on Rossignol’s gun, aimed right between his eyes.

“Juno, duck!” Ransom cried, voice shattering.

Had Rossignol not fired, Juno might have had time to process Ransom’s last-ditch effort to save his life before everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below!!
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gonna drop a blanket warning for some minor gore?? like it's referenced that it's there but not described too thoroughly
> 
> Content warning for minor gore, blood, injury, referenced gun violence, a character is briefly assumed dead, capital punishment mention, nausea mention, implied self hatred

“Juno, please—“

Rossignol was still standing, tossing the emptied gun towards Nureyev and trying to make herself look presentable as possible. Nureyev didn’t care. There was blood on his hands and blood on his shirt and worst of all, it was Juno’s. He couldn’t feel himself breathe or hear himself think over the single, terrible truth that choked through the air of the room like the stench of iron now seizing at his throat.

Juno was bleeding terribly, and worst of all, he wasn’t moving.

“Juno,” Nureyev repeated, as if an entreatment might convince the bullet to drop out of his brain. “Please, please breathe.”

“He’s not going to get up and start walking just because you asked, you know,” Rossignol mused as she fixed her suit jacket. 

“You’re going to pay for this,” Nureyev choked out, wishing Juno’s head would stir or raise or do anything other than lay limply in his lap and bleed and bleed and bleed.

“No, I don’t think I will,” Rossignol shrugged. “If you lay a hand on me, my other employees know exactly where to find you. I’m feeling nice today, so I might as well give you a tip. If you line up the cameras and the blueprints, you and Steel walked in here just about together. Now he’s dead, you’re left with the gun, and you’re covered in his blood. I would leave as soon as possible, in your shoes.”

Nureyev opened his mouth to reply, but Rossignol had left, a public-friendly smile already pasted on her face.

“Dammit,” he hissed. “Juno, can you hear me?”

He knew it was futile. Whatever set of powers the government had given to Juno had been kept thoroughly under wraps, though surviving the injury wouldn’t be entirely out of the ordinary for a mutated individual. However, Juno’s chest still barely shook. Nureyev couldn’t tell if the pulse he felt was the racing of his own heart beating through his fingers or a sign of life from his companion.

Regardless, Juno didn’t reply. Nureyev winced. If his face were less a mess of blood and gore, he might have reached down to slide his eyelids shut.

However, he had something far more immediately pressing to deal with. Not only was Juno’s blood hot and thick and tacky and beginning to dry rust red upon his fingers, he had found himself alone, armed, and with a dead or dying body on his hands. As much as he wanted to shake Juno until his arms grew sore or beg him to wake up until his voice went raw, that wouldn’t change the fact that a bullet had soared through his forehead, and if Nureyev stayed there long, he would probably see the business end of an electric chair.

It would be smartest to leave Juno and run. However, with something choking his throat and something hot burning at the backs of his eyes, Nureyev realized that he had accidentally allowed the detective to render him an idiot.

“Juno, if you can hear me, I need you to move something,” Nureyev murmured as he fixed his arms underneath Juno’s and began to drag him back towards the staff hallway. “A leg or arm, if that’s most comfortable.”

Juno’s right arm twitched and Nureyev did his best to contain a relieved sob.

“Good, good,” he breathed as he continued to drag him down a hall he could only pray was empty. “If you think you can walk, move your arm again. Twice for no, perhaps.”

His arm twitched twice and Nureyev swallowed.

“I don’t know how well I’ll be able to carry you. That doesn’t mean I won’t try,” Nureyev continued. “This just won’t be comfortable.”

Nureyev didn’t know how long that would matter if Juno kept bleeding like this, his only noises ragged breaths that were as shallow as they were agonized. Peter was fairly sure the memory of the sound would haunt him for the remainder of his life, regardless of if Juno actually survived or not.

For both of their sakes, he could only pray his arms didn’t give out before he reached the back exit of the headquarters, from which a walk to his apartment’s fire escape wouldn’t be difficult. He already dreaded the stairs, but if Juno had healed by then, if Juno could heal in such a way at all, perhaps he might not need to climb them alone. 

All Nureyev could do as he spat and hissed and swore under his breath was pray Juno had enough of a healing factor to drag him through the ordeal without any pain. If that weren’t the case, he could only pray that Juno died quickly and that those breathless gasps and groans fell away into a bitter, albeit peaceful silence.

Nureyev didn’t remember how he was able to drag Juno up to his apartment, but he knew for certain he did so without Juno’s help. His head was a blur, brain buzzing with stress and panic and attempts to remember where every single security camera was. He wasn’t sure what his face looked like, and he couldn’t have told his height if he wanted to. All he could focus on was unlocking the window with one clammy, trembling hand while Juno’s entire body weight collapsed into his side.

“We’re almost there, love,” he murmured, trying to swallow down tears or bile or emotion as Juno let out a pained whimper at the jostle of being dragged through the window. “I’m so sorry.”

Juno, of course, didn’t respond. That didn’t mean he did not try, attempting and failing to murmur something that sounded so small and vulnerable Nureyev felt dirty for having heard it at all.

With the last of his composure, Nureyev deposited Juno on the bed and shut the window and blinds, uncaring that blood had smeared on the rod he used to block out the light from the street. He didn’t have the stomach to check to see how Juno was doing.

A stronger man might have sat at his side and held his hand while he bled out onto the towels Nureyev had stacked beneath his head. However, with tears creeping their way into his eyes and blood drying on his hands and the dying groans of a lady he had hardly known and yet given his bare and bloodied heart to on a silver platter filling his ears, Nureyev knew he could only take one thing at a time.

He took a deep breath and forced his hands under the cool running water of the bathroom sink. He didn’t care that he hadn’t turned the lights on or that tears were beginning to carve bloody streaks through the mess upon a face that was definitely his own and definitely one he never wanted to see in the mirror again.

Nureyev didn’t listen for when Juno’s breathing inevitably stopped. He didn’t notice that his hands had started shaking. He didn’t try to figure out whether stress or tears or the freezing temperature of the water had rendered them that way.

He tried to steady his breathing. He failed. He tried to stop his tears. He failed. Every tiny blow felt like a strike to the face, and before he knew it, his head was hung over the sink, limp with hair that he recognized was black, rather than Ransom’s brown, even in the dark.

Between the heaving of his breaths and the running of the water and the roaring of his thoughts, Nureyev didn’t hear the footsteps until the light flicked on, causing him to jump so badly his head nearly collided with the mirror.

“Juno!” He gasped as he turned.

Usually, he didn’t like to jump in horror at the appearance of his bedmates. However, he could hardly make out the face of Juno Steel beneath the streaks of drying blood and gore upon an otherwise pleasantly confused face.

Juno squinted.

“What the hell happened?” He slurred, then swayed, then would have toppled over if Nureyev hadn’t caught him by the biceps.

“You were shot in the head,” Nureyev breathed. “Why are you alive?”

“Don’t sound so mad about it,” Juno chuckled deliriously. “You want the bullet?”

“What?”

“You want the bullet?” Juno repeated, louder this time.

“Beg pardon?” Nureyev sputtered.

Juno leaned away from him, even if Nureyev kept his arms nearby, just in case he should tip over. However, Juno merely raised a hand to the back of his head and whacked it a few times like a swimmer attempting to get water out of their ear. Peter wasn’t sure he had the stomach to watch as Juno continued, but when he finally opened his eyes, a bullet had dropped into Juno’s hand, which was extended, as if Nureyev should take it as a gift.

“That’s nice, dear,” Nureyev swallowed.

“Do you want it?”

“No thank you,” he choked.

Juno shrugged, tossing the bullet into the trash can with somehow decent aim.

“Juno,” Nureyev began once more, letting his hands rise up to Juno’s arms to drag him down onto the floor to take a seat or lay down or do whatever he needed to do to keep from bleeding any more of his brain onto Nureyev’s good towels. “Dear, how are you okay?”

“Government juice,” Juno elaborated, going on a bit of a journey with his hand gestures until Nureyev seemed to get the picture.

“Do you need me to help you with anything?” Nureyev asked as gently as he could manage. While Juno thought over his answer, he reached for a washcloth and ran it under the still-cold water from the sink.

“Lotta blood on my face,” Juno nodded.

“Yes, there’s no need to worry about that,” Nureyev returned gently as he sank back to the ground at Juno’s side. “I’ll take care of you, dear.”

“Don’t like blood,” Juno added. “Really don’t like blood.”

“Well then, why don’t I get rid of it for you?” Nureyev tried in earnest to smile, though it felt about as weak and shaky and terrified as he did.

Juno merely nodded.

Before long, Nureyev’s cloth was on his face, running gentle lines over the curve of his cheekbone and ensuring no blood dried anywhere near his eyes or nose or mouth, where he seemed to most abhor the presence of the substance. Juno hummed thoughtfully, occasionally letting out a relaxed sigh while Nureyev did his best to scrub blood out of his brows.

“This is nice,” he murmured as the cloth passed over his forehead once more.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Nureyev returned, perhaps a little too tersely. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Dizzy,” Juno returned. “No injury left to hurt, but I still need more blood. More blood would be good. Don’t need yours though, I’ve got homemade.”

Nureyev nodded. As much as he wanted to ensure Juno had a hand to squeeze and someone to ensure he didn’t fall over and hit his head, he was forced to lean away just to rinse the washcloth and throw it over the faucet. When he returned, Juno surprised him with a limp hug, half around his neck and half around his waist.

“You’re so warm,” Juno murmured into his shoulder.

“Let’s get you to bed, dear,” Nureyev tried to smile as gently as possible with the remnants of stress still tearing at his nerves. “I think you’ll heal best with some sleep.”

“Mhm,” Juno murmured, still trying to hold Nureyev close as he stood, half-carrying him to the side of the bed that didn’t bear the towels. “You’re so sweet on me, Ransom.”

Nureyev opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“My—” he started, swallowing. “My name isn’t Ransom.”

“Whatever,” Juno huffed into his pillow. “Don’t go, Not-Ransom.”

“I need to put these towels away before your blood soaks through,” Nureyev protested. 

Juno didn’t reply when Nureyev did so, though he let out a jokingly pissy huff that would have made Peter laugh if his chest wasn’t already tied up in knots. It was the kind of sound that made him want to dispose of the towels as quickly as possible and return to Juno’s side, so he did so.

He had expected Juno to be asleep upon his return, but when Nureyev stretched out beneath the bed sheets, Juno had already rolled over to press himself into his side. He murmured a few indeterminable sweet nothings and wrapped an arm over Nureyev’s waist before he could so much as lay down, leaving him with his back against the headboard and Juno’s attempt at holding him failed.

Instead, Juno merely let his head lay in Nureyev’s lap while Peter’s hand brushed through his now blood-free curls.

“Hey,” Juno smiled up at him. “Who’s this new face? I don’t think I’ve seen him before.”

Nureyev swallowed, remembering he had long since abandoned the appearance of Ransom. The pair of them looked similar enough that it wasn’t too much of a stretch to vary between the two faces without another thought. Ransom had become a second skin, in all senses of the term. However, he had expected Juno to object a lot more to his natural, unperfected face. Juno had fallen for Ransom, not Nureyev, after all.

Instead, Juno looked up at him with innocent, albeit dazed eyes, paired with a gentle smile.

“He looks nice,” Juno added. “Is this you?”

“This is me,” Nureyev confirmed, physically wrestling down the urge to change himself in that moment in an attempt to erase a line or wrinkle or patch of graying hair before Juno could see it.

Juno smiled gently.

“What should I call him?”

“Peter Nureyev,” he answered simply.

“Well, goodnight, Peter Nureyev,” Juno yawned. “Don’t go anywhere on me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Nureyev returned earnestly. He couldn’t think of anywhere he’d rather be anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAN!
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill fuck your mom
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeehaw
> 
> Content warnings for references to gun violence, implied body image issues, food/drink, war mention, discussion of economic depression, nureyev-typical backstory, discussion of x-men style prejudice, references to murder

Juno wasn’t sure if it was a hangover or the bullet in his brain, but when he woke up, the only thing he could be sure of was that his head ached like nobody’s business.

The bed beneath him was a little softer than his own, well-worn and obviously not handling it very well. His head had come to rest on somebody’s chest, but he was too tired and bleary eyed to discern who his bedmate might be or how the hell he might have ended up there in the first place. In fact, he had no memory of anything after the press conference turned gala the night before.

At the thought of the evening and the knife and the gunshot and a name that kept sticking in his mind, even though he didn’t remember ever hearing it, Juno sat bolt upright.

“Dear,” someone complained from his side. “You need your sleep.”

“Ransom?” Juno sputtered out upon looking down, only to see the man who had been holding him hardly resembled Peter Ransom at all. “Wait—that’s not right, is it?”

Juno took another glance down at the man, whose hair was a similar cut to Ransom’s, but darker and whose eyes still shone with the same obsidian glint, even in the early morning light. He was handsome in a domestic sort of way, in that something soft and sappy and warm bloomed in Juno’s chest as his eyes traced the gentle curve of his cheek and sharp lines of his jaw and nose. 

“Juno,” he yawned, and the sound of the voice clicked the name and face and circumstances together better than any detective work Juno could have done on his own. “You were injured. You need to sleep.”

“Nureyev,” Juno realized.

“Yes, I’m glad to see I made the mistake of telling you that while you were cognisant enough to remember my lapse in judgement but please, do lay back down,” Nureyev murmured into the pillow.

The arm that had been across Juno’s waist as they slept had repositioned itself over Nureyev’s eyes, blocking out the light from the lamp Juno had flicked on in his panic. Out of sympathy for Nureyev’s exhausted, light-sensitive wince, he flicked it back off again, but his mind raced far too quickly for him to lay back down.

“Juno,” Nureyev complained again.

“I’ll be fine,” Juno returned. “How’d I get here?”

Nureyev huffed, flipping over to give Juno a glare that was completely undercut by just how lovely it looked in the early morning light.

“Just because you’ve elected to save your wellbeing for later doesn’t mean I necessarily want to do the same,” he sighed. “If you’re going to interrogate me, at least let me make coffee first.”

On the one hand, Juno could very easily give in to the aching in his head and the drag of sleep and the memory of Nureyev’s embrace, warm and sweet and everything he had been pretending not to want for the last several weeks. He had to admit he missed that gentle, yet utilitarian touch from the night before, preserved in memories that were as blurry as they were tender.

On the other hand, reminders of the knife and the genuine threat of death burning behind those dark and usually lovely eyes squirmed in his mind, and Juno knew he could not get back into those arms until he had far more answers.

As such, he sighed, stretched, cracked his back in three or four different places, and rolled out of bed. He pretended not to see a still half-awake Nureyev reaching blindly for him, then giving up with a huff that couldn’t possibly belong to the same man who had held Rossignol at knifepoint the night before.

It could, however, have belonged to the gentleman who danced with him and kissed him and smiled at him like Juno Steel was his entire world. Juno shook his head as he made his way to what he assumed was Nureyev’s kitchen, indulging the wish that Nureyev could merely split into two people so he could love one and feel confused about the other.

Juno was halfway through making the first pot of coffee when Nureyev managed to drag himself from bed, sleep-laden, but with a new and younger face. It looked incorrect in the way the weather reporter begins to look less and less like an actual person over time as the pressure of television demands they fix their every line and wrinkle and imperfection.

Nureyev must have caught him frowning, for he mirrored the look.

“Is something wrong?”

“Nureyev,” Juno started, voice quiet. “That’s not your face, is it?”

Nureyev tried a little too hard to shrug it off.

“Should it matter?”

Juno swallowed.

“I know I can’t tell you what to look like or anything, I was just worried,” he sighed.

“Well, then aren’t you lucky that there is, in fact, nothing to worry about?” Nureyev returned, his smile a little too strained for Juno’s liking.

Juno turned back to the pair of mugs he had pulled from the cabinet, though when he turned to ask Nureyev where the sugar was, he only caught the back of his head as Nureyev stared down his reflection in a spoon, shifting facial features and bone structure and hair color and height until he looked like an entirely different parody of a younger man. Juno swallowed. It wasn’t his issue to comment on, especially not with a behemoth of a conversation approaching them. However, he couldn’t pretend it didn’t make a part of his stomach knot.

“Nureyev?” He called.

When Nureyev turned around, it seemed he had grown frustrated and settled for the face of Ransom once more.

“Yes?”

“Where’s the sugar?”

Nureyev swallowed.

“I don’t keep any.”

Juno raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment, turning back to pour their coffees before sliding one down the counter in Nureyev’s direction. Despite the clear exhaustion weighing on his shoulders, Peter caught it and brought it to his lips like it was an antidote for some sort of poison.

“Thank you,” he smiled, though it slurred into a yawn.

“You awake enough for me to interrogate you yet?” Juno snorted as he took a seat on the counter, coffee still in hand as he tried not to wince too hard at the flavor without any sweetener.

“My, you are persistent,” Nureyev chuckled. “I don’t see why not.”

“Did you kill Rossignol?”

“Starting blunt, are we?” Nureyev smiled, pausing to take a drink. “I didn’t do her any harm, regretfully. She shot you and I was too busy trying to get the both of us to safety to take revenge.”

“Why?”

“Why I saved you, or why I didn’t kill her?”

“Both,” Juno shrugged.

Nureyev took a deep breath.

“One is a much longer story than the other,” he winced.

Juno glanced at the clock, then shrugged once more.

“I’m presumed dead. I don’t have anywhere to be,” he returned. “And you said you’d talk.”

“I was orphaned during the Depression,” Nureyev began while Juno instantly regretted taking his interrogation so seriously. “I spent a few years at an orphanage before deciding to run, then found myself in the care of a father figure, I suppose you could call him. He taught me how to pick pockets well enough to support myself and by the time the Depression ended, I managed to turn it into a career.”

“Not drafted?”

“A year too young,” Nureyev nodded. “I dodged your fate, thankfully.”

“I signed up,” Juno admitted. “Apparently I’ve always been this stupid.”

“You’re a genius, Juno,” Nureyev corrected quickly. “You just happen to be a genius who doesn’t know how to take care of himself.”

Juno opened his mouth to protest, then shut it with a glare that Nureyev matched with a teasing smile.

“What’s the rest of the story?”

Nureyev’s smile withered on his lips.

“Well, my name and face have always been things I’ve attempted to keep particularly close to my chest. Unfortunately, I made myself known around the wrong individual at an underground meeting of mutants, and Rossignol managed to find out about both my identity and my criminal history,” Nureyev winced.

“Well, how bad does it have to be? If you were just pickpocketing, that’s gotta be a fine and a few months of jail time at worst,” Juno returned.

Nureyev swallowed, and though Juno couldn’t see it on his face, he knew his mind had just been dragged into a far younger corner of memory, and it was certainly one he never wanted to visit again. He shook his head, and remembering his drink, buried his face behind his coffee.

When he looked up again, he looked years older than the face he had put on for the morning. Juno couldn’t tell if it had been a physical shift or just the weight of emotion dragging at his dark circles.

“I don’t kill people, Juno,” he returned slowly. “I can’t say the same for my father. If I hadn’t—he would have—”

Juno didn’t remember when he had taken a seat at the table at Nureyev’s side, nor did he remember when he had taken him by the hand and squeezed it.

“Tell me about Rossignol,” he interrupted before Nureyev could either relive a hideous memory or confess something Juno didn’t have it within himself to forgive.

“She found out about that,” he sighed. “And I’ve been working for her under blackmail ever since. I’m not a journalist, nor am I any kind of freelance reporter. I serve as an agent of sorts, but recently, I worry I’ve been digging my own grave.”

“Is that what you were talking about with the technology?”

Nureyev swallowed, then nodded.

“I’m not sure what form they might take, but she’s been collecting a database of any mutants, whether or not they’ve gone into hiding,” Nureyev continued. “I’m not proud to say I played a part in retrieving many of the details. However, that database contains details on weaknesses, schedules, anything that could tell the owner of the information exactly when and how to eliminate them.”

“Eliminate?”

Nureyev winced.

“I stole some of Rossignol’s notes,” he sighed. “She refers to the machine as the Guardian Angel System in its full form, but in passing, she calls it a population control device. I suspect if any one of us steps out of line in a way she doesn’t like—”

“Holy shit,” Juno cut him off. Nureyev nodded.

“She’s attempting to get a government sponsorship to repeal the overly controlling legislation,” Nureyev continued. “If she succeeds and the legislation repeals, then we’ll be fully legal citizens, just with a thousand volts of electricity breathing down our necks at all times.”

“Jesus Christ,” Juno breathed.

“As for your second question, I didn’t want you to die,” Nureyev added quickly.

“What?”

Nureyev managed a weak smile.

“You wanted to know why I didn’t leave you behind,” he replied simply. “Because I like your company, and on principle, I try to keep the number of people dead because of me to a minimum.”

“Oh,” Juno sputtered, the fact that he was holding Nureyev’s hand becoming so painfully obvious that he broke away to take another drink of coffee, if just to pretend he needed both hands for something. “I—uh—I like being alive too. And I like your company.”

“I’m glad we can find something to agree on,” Nureyev smiled. “Now, I suppose there’s a more pressing question at hand.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve been attempting to bring down the Guardian Angel System single-handedly for some time, but if Rossignol wasn’t onto me before, I’m sure she is now,” Nureyev explained, though his voice turned to a bitter parody of a news headline as he continued. “If I’m going to enact my own brand of vigilante justice properly, I suppose I’ll need a partner in crime.”

Juno swallowed.

“How much research did you actually do on me before you came to interview me?”

“Enough,” Nureyev returned. “Enough to know you’re a private individual and that I’m asking for a steep price. I know you’ve kept your head down ever since you fell out with the HCPD.”

Juno sighed.

“You know why I did that?”

“I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to,” Nureyev replied.

“I thought that maybe if I didn’t dip my toe into anything, I’d be fine. If I never worked with someone like I worked with Ben, I wouldn’t have to grieve like that again. If I stopped working for the government, I wouldn’t have to deal with their bullshit again,” Juno began slowly. “If I never touched politics, even the ones made because of or in spite of me, they couldn’t hurt me, you know?”

Nureyev nodded. When he reached over to take and squeeze Juno’s hand, Juno didn’t stop him.

“Hell of a way to waste twenty years,” Juno sighed.

“I don’t think they were a waste,” Nureyev replied simply. “There are all sorts of theories on the tiny impacts of our actions, but I think it’s easiest to say that however you spent these last two decades brought you to me, and I suppose that’s a kindness in itself.”

Juno squeezed his hand back.

“I’m gonna need a day to think on it. I need to make a few phone calls and close up at the office, but after that—well, I know how to get in contact with you. I’ll let you know.”

“Is that a yes?”

“If I make it ‘til tonight, it’s a yes,” Juno smiled faintly.

When Nureyev returned the look, Juno caught the shadow of a laugh line on the edge of his mouth and couldn’t help but wonder if Nureyev knew he had slipped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohO!
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill take all your left socks 
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey all!! i finally found an excuse to squeeze my favorite minor villain of all time into something
> 
> Content warnings for minor violence, assassination attempt, smoking mention, references to the use of a mobility aid, use of a tranquilizer, burn mention, minor gun violence (it's established this is the tranquilizer, but I thought i'd tag it regardless)

The man in Juno’s lobby had a knife under his coat. That much was certain. 

Juno had half a mind to think it was Nureyev, merely clinging to his weapon under a new coat and hidden under a new face. However, he had seen enough of Peter shifting and resculpting his face in the warped reflection of a spoon that morning to know that Nureyev would have died before shaping his appearance into something as moderately distasteful as the man who had all but shoved his way past Juno’s closing door, insisting his case was emergency.

Nureyev had also squeezed his hands farewell and said he would be waiting at home if anything went awry. It didn’t seem like the kind of word someone would go back on, even someone with more blood on their hands than they could say and more incentive to lie than most.

Peter had almost kissed him at the door, freezing halfway to wait for Juno to close the space. Juno remembered the heady, smoke-stained kiss of the night before, thick with Ransom’s perfume and soft with the light of the showroom. He remembered it being gentle and sweet and the best thing to happen to him in weeks, and yet, he could not bring his lips to meet those of this overcorrected version of Peter Ransom who tried to bid him farewell.

Juno knew it wasn’t his place to judge how someone else used their abilities. It wasn’t his place to spurn Nureyev because of it either. However, kissing that strange version of Peter Ransom felt like kissing a man through a mask.

Juno had said his goodbyes and decided that his absence would be kept as short as possible. If he remembered his details from the case file, which he hoped to retrieve in his last trip to the office, Rossignol’s next plan was to showcase her device to a small crowd of thoroughly wined and dined politicians and investors. While he wasn’t entirely sure when this would happen, he had a hunch that his window to plan for the event was rapidly closing.

He had meant to squeeze into the office, take the file, and close up, just in case anyone who knew he wasn’t meant to be alive came knocking. Todd, as he called himself, had other plans.

“Detective Steel,” he called from his paced path up and down the lobby.

Juno was beginning to wish he had shut the door to his office so he could properly pretend not to hear him. Instead, he merely had to grunt out an excuse as he continued to stuff paper upon paper into a briefcase he was fairly sure was Nureyev’s.

“Give me a moment,” he huffed. “I was gonna take today off, so consider yourself lucky I’m squeezing you in at all.”

“You do know the meaning of an emergency, don’t you?”

“Yeah, and maybe I’m having some kind of emergency,” Juno growled.

It seemed to take all of Todd’s resolve to hold back a roll of his eyes, but he conceded into, at the least, a parody of patience. Even if it took a huffed out breath, he folded himself into a chair and reached for a magazine, even if he clearly kept one hand on his knife.

Juno tried to keep his mouth shut, just in case the man with a knife who wouldn’t give Juno his last name and probably hadn’t given him a real first name had a genuine problem. He supposed even the most suspicious of figures could fall into a bad spot at times. He had the glaring memory of Nureyev to remind him of that.

As nice as he was trying and failing to be, that didn’t change the fact that Todd’s gaze was cold and focused, brow knit and eyes unmoving as he pretended to read his magazine in a chair that was distinctly between Juno and the door. 

Juno prepared to call Todd into the office when another knock at the door cut through the room, this one louder and sharper than Juno would have expected from what appeared to be the figure of an old man at the door.

“Let yourself in!” He called.

“Why thank you, young lady,” the man returned, a long, black cane that was nearly as tall as he was entering the room before he could slump his way over to one of the chairs. 

Juno started an awkward half-jog from his office to help him find a seat. He wasn’t a doctor by any means, but the man had nearly bent double to use his cane to shuffle into a seat before Juno could even reach his side. When Juno found himself caught, biting back an apology and glancing between his clients, the old man merely winked and fixed him with a smile that was almost familiar.

“No need to trouble yourself, detective, I’ll be quite alright,” he returned, sounding far too amused for his own good.

Juno opened his mouth to reply when the shifting of Todd’s chair broke him off.

Todd had hardly spared a glance for the gentleman. Using his last drop of chivalry, he gave Juno a nod before inviting himself into the office, and subsequently, the chair across from Juno’s desk. For once, Juno had the good sense not to close the door behind him, client confidentiality be damned. Regardless of his suspicions about the old man, Juno would rather have his life threatened when Todd wasn’t blocking his exit.

“Just a heads up, if you’re ever using a private eye again, make sure to call first,” Juno started as he took a seat at his desk, ensuring that Todd didn’t see him rummaging for his gun.

“Well, detective,” Todd began with a serpent’s smile. “I was sent on behalf of one Madame Rossignol.”

“Oh, her? The rich one or the one I went to high school with?”

“Very funny,” Todd returned coolly. “Your former employer, if I’m remembering.”

“Client, actually. Funny how those things work,” Juno shrugged. “So you’re what—her singing telegram?”

“Butler,” Todd replied.

“Huh,” Juno considered. “So that’s what they’re calling strange men who walk into your office unannounced these days.”

Todd laughed coldly, shaking his head.

“She said you were tense, but I didn’t think she meant paranoid.”

“Yeah, well,” Juno shrugged. “It’s kept me alive so far. Speaking of which, is that a knife in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

The slice of metal through the air answered Juno’s question for him. 

“Rossignol says hi,” Todd smiled while the distorted reflection of his bared smile glinted back from his drawn blade.

Juno shoved his hand into the drawer in one last desperate search for a gun that had been just within reach mere seconds ago. However, he lurched away from the desk altogether when a different screech of gunfire cut through the air and Todd hit the ground without so much as a groan.

Peter Nureyev stood over the body in the old man’s battered coat, face drawn into a sneer and cane held aloft like a rifle. Only when Juno blinked and squinted at the strange device did he realize the device had, in fact, been a firearm, the mechanisms hidden behind Nureyev’s hands and the patch-worn jacket of the gentleman Juno had suspected of feigning his limp. 

In the flickering office light, rendered hazy by Todd’s still smoking cigarette butt in the ashtray on Juno’s desk, Nureyev looked like some kind of angel, even with blood splattered on his face and a patchwork halo of smoke and light and hair still frazzled and half-grayed in his rapid transformation.

“Nureyev?” Juno sputtered.

“He’s not dead,” Nureyev returned evenly. “That was a tranquilizer, though if my aim was right, it’ll leave a hell of a scar.”

“What the hell is that thing?”

Nureyev considered the cane.

“I have a knee that acts up on occasion,” he explained with a shrug. “I think any good medical device should double as a firearm anyway.”

“So what the hell are you doing here?”

“Saving your life,” Nureyev hissed. “I don’t know how long it’s going to be until either law enforcement or Rossignol’s backup comes to follow through. They won’t stop their search for you unless they can prove that you’re dead. If this gentleman wakes up and finds your office empty, he’ll assume you escaped.”

“What?” Juno repeated. “So what, you expect me to sit there and play dead?”

“No,” Nureyev returned, though it was clear his impatience was beginning to bubble up as his usually relaxed shoulders rose. 

The remainder of his appearance seemed a mixed bag. It appeared that he couldn’t decide between appearing as Ransom or himself, for his features kept fluctuating with the turning of the gears in his mind, as if he was nearly too distracted to keep up appearances.

“You’re not gonna—”

“I mastered the art of disappearance when I was eight years old, detective,” Nureyev assured him. “Now, let me see your face so I can get a proper picture of your scars.”

“How the hell are you gonna be able to replicate this? What about—I dunno, blood, DNA, that kind of thing?”

“I intend to disappear before such things can be tested. As for blood, it seems your failed assassin has supplied us with plenty,” Nureyev returned, one hand pausing atop Juno’s face as he spoke. “Hold still. I can’t quite get the one on your chin.”

“That one’s from a weird burn, actually,” Juno murmured, though his voice was blurred from his attempts to talk around Nureyev’s hand. “If that helps.”

“How do you get a burn there of all places?”

Juno huffed.

“It’s really not important.”

“Tell me, Juno,” Nureyev smiled as the scar began to replicate itself upon his own chin, light at first, like the sketched skeleton of an artist’s figure. As he continued to speak, it darkened with confidence until it matched the shade of Juno’s mark perfectly. “Is it unimportant or embarrassing?”

“Look,” Juno groaned. “I didn’t know how to blow out my birthday candles as a kid, so I just kinda stuck my face in there and hoped for the best.”

“Oh, my dear detective,” Nureyev chuckled. “Don’t ever stop surprising me.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Juno knew he was past the point of pretending not to enjoy the way Nureyev’s hands felt on his face, even if they were gloved. In any form, his touch remained warm and gentle and delicate, and for once, Juno couldn’t find it within himself to hate those scars Nureyev studied. His fingertips memorized the shapes while his face copied them, practicing just the right shade and shape and depth until the galaxy of marks had been mirrored.

When Nureyev finished his work, he kissed the scar across Juno’s nose for good measure.

“They don’t look half bad on you,” Juno snorted.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Nureyev smiled, though it was clear the look was strained. “You wear them like a royal wears the crown jewels, my love. I doubt many others could pull such a look off.”

Juno opened his mouth to reply, but a streak of red and blue light whirred past the window before his heart could even finish dropping at the sound of nearby sirens.

“Shit. Someone heard,” he breathed.

“How many articles of clothing do you think we can trade in say, the next minute?”

“What is it with you and tearing my clothes off every time you’re in my office?” Juno huffed, already halfway done with tossing his coat onto Todd’s chair when Nureyev began to help him with his buttons. “Shit, I just got it cleaned.”

“No, it’s probably best to get some blood on it,” Nureyev continued, tossing Juno his blouse like a projectile and doing his best to grimace his way through a shrink in stature to fit the shirt sleeves. “Put that on and go back to my apartment as quickly as you can. Don’t look back. I doubt you want to see what I’d look like impersonating your corpse.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Juno grimaced. “Stay safe, alright?”

“I have no intention of doing anything else,” Nureyev assured him, catching Juno by the elbow before he could leave.

With the guilt of their farewell that morning half as potent as the pleading look Nureyev had accidentally allowed himself to reveal, Juno knew there was nothing to do but fist his hands in the front of his own shirt and kiss him. 

As strange as it was to press his lips to a pair that were scarred in a mirror image of his own, Juno couldn’t help but feel that their desperate motion of parting was far sweeter than the kiss he had shared with Peter Ransom. With law enforcement breathing down his neck and the clock on the wall bleeding seconds and Nureyev already beginning to wear his face, he knew the moment could only last so long, and yet here he was, kissing the true Peter Nureyev behind all those layers of mask.

He wished he could have appreciated it longer, but the sound of footsteps on the stairs in lieu of the broken elevator snapped him out of his bliss.

“Go,” Nureyev hissed, and despite himself, Juno did as he was asked.

He truly wished he hadn’t turned right before leaving, just in time to catch a look at a perfect double of himself feigning death upon the floor. Juno swallowed. He caught Nureyev’s eye one last time to receive a thumbs up from a gloved hand that quickly remembered itself and stuffed the gloves into a pocket of Juno’s coat.

“Meet me there, alright?” Juno called.

With the footsteps from the hall growing ever closer, he couldn’t afford to wait for a reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in general i dont like inventing weapons for stuff but CANE GUN?????? yeah call that a boom stick
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill get you with the Boom Stick (and by that i mean let you hold it and look at it but dont fire it in the house because then my mom will be mad and she wont let you come over again)
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im just shoving these two together and yelling TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS DAMMIT so have fun with that
> 
> Content warnings for implied sexual content, self hatred, war mention, survivor's guilt, self destructive behavior, body image issues/dysmorphia

Juno knew he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up enough to expect that Nureyev would be home within the hour. However, after another three had passed and the sun began to set somewhere behind the maze of skyscrapers and the dark haze of city night, Juno could only pace a hole into the carpet and pray the royal purple smoke of evening hadn’t swallowed him whole.

The part of him that liked to call itself logic, even if it was just cynicism in a mask, chastised the spiked ball he felt at the back of his throat and repeatedly tried to down with glass after glass of water, a trick he had learned to curb unwanted sorrow. Nureyev was a criminal, after all, regardless of how sweet he had convinced Juno into thinking he actually was.

Juno chugged another glass of water and wiped his mouth and reminded himself that he wasn’t much better than another mutant just because the same government that spat on Nureyev was the one that had made and pardoned him.

When the window finally creaked open, letting a long, lean fang of streetlight take a bite of the darkened bedroom, Juno’s first instinct was to reach for his gun. However, when the shadow squeezing into the apartment morphed and stretched into a familiar shape once more, Juno repurposed his hand upon the lightswitch and replaced the inky black of the room with a sputtering orange.

Panting and bloodied, Nureyev barely stopped to greet Juno, merely throwing the coat into a nearby chair and falling onto the mattress. He seemed far too concerned with catching his breath to care about what he looked like, so with his mind fluttering uselessly in a blind attempt to grasp at calm, his squeezed-shut eyelids were some of the only aspects of his face that remained the same.

“Nureyev,” Juno started gently, crossing the room to close the window before anything more than dusky moonlight could slither into the room. “Are you okay?”

“Dear God, you’re short,” Nureyev gasped, breaking into a wheezy laugh.

“Hey!”

“I had to run as you—if I shifted, they would have known, but nobody’s going to believe an officer who says they saw a corpse get up and run,” Nureyev chuckled as he flipped entirely onto his back, absentmindedly kicking his shoes off.

“Not all of us can be born looking like goddamned gazelles,” Juno huffed.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Nureyev smiled faintly.

“You need anything while I’m up?” 

Nureyev glanced down at the several inches Juno’s button down had ridden up each of his arms.

“How would you feel about getting me a glass of water and a new shirt, dear?”

Juno gave him an affirmative thumbs up and returned with both a sleep shirt and a pair of glasses, one already half empty as he brought it back to his lips. Nureyev took both offerings gingerly, though whether his touch was shaky or just weak, Juno could not tell. 

“Juno, as lovely as I was hoping our reunion might be,” Nureyev breathed, words still trembling with adrenaline when he paused himself to take another long and soothing drink. “Do you mind a brief interrogation first?”

“You’re not my suspect anymore, Nureyev,” Juno snorted.

“Then I’ll paraphrase it,” Nureyev smiled. “We need to talk about something.”

“Yeah, no, I actually liked the first one better.”

“Good,” Peter chuckled, though the light, conversational tone died as quickly as it came. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, adjusted his face to that of Ransom, and started once more. “If you knew that man was going to try to kill you, why did you let him into your office?”

“What?”

Nureyev paused to take another drink. Juno couldn’t help but notice that Ransom’s face didn’t bear any kind of flush in his cheeks, though his ears and hands seemed to be red where the exertion manifested elsewhere. While a thin sheen of sweat still decorated Ransom’s forehead, his hair was thicker and a bit darker than usual, as if to hide as much of this lapse in appearance as possible. Corrections that Juno wouldn’t have even thought of were made, and all he could think was that Nureyev had to have spent hours fixing this face before to have memorized such minute changes.

“I’m sure your ears haven’t ceased working since I last saw you,” Nureyev continued. “If you knew the man was armed, why did you let him into your office?”

“He shoved his way in,” Juno returned blankly.

“I went through enough of your drawers to see your gun. You could have easily had the police come for him before he even drew, especially refusing to give you a name and being hostile with you,” Nureyev pressed. “Why didn’t you do anything to stop him?”

Juno blinked.

“Well, I—uh—I assumed whatever he did to me wouldn’t be anything I couldn’t recover from,” he answered.

Nureyev sat up a little straighter and set his empty glass aside. Juno wished he hadn’t. Even if Ransom’s face had replaced his own, his dark, piercing stare had remained. Juno leaned back onto the doorframe, as if having some point of contact other than the floor might change the fact that Nureyev’s lamplit expression was worse than a glare.

He could have taken it if Peter had been angry. He’d marched his way through a thousand arguments about being self sacrificing or self deprecating or self loathing or whatever their talking point was for the week. He’d been throwing himself headfirst into danger since he was old enough to take a punch for his brother, and thankfully, had managed to either justify or ignore the issue ever since.

However, Nureyev had the nerve to look sorry for him.

“Juno,” he began slowly, still sounding like he was forcing professionalism into his voice. “I know you heal easily but—does it hurt?”

“I mean, if it didn’t hurt, I’d be fucked up in all sorts of ways,” Juno shrugged. “Couldn’t tell when I pulled something, couldn’t—”

“Juno.”

Juno sighed.

“You understand why this worries me, correct?”

“I’m not chasing after it or anything,” Juno huffed. “I just—I dunno. I can take it. I’ve done worse. If I just let him think he killed me, then I’d probably have the least trouble handling him and calling the police over it.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yeah,” Juno admitted, leaning against the door at a slightly different angle so he didn’t have to meet that look, one usually sharp rendered sweet just for him. “Yeah, I get why you’re worried. That’s kinda why I quit the HCPD and all that, you know? I could run headfirst into danger on my own time.”

“You don’t have to live like this, you know.”

“I’m a damage sponge, Nureyev,” Juno said bitterly. “It’s what I’m good for.”

“Juno—” he began to chide.

“It should’ve been me, you know that, right? I was supposed to be the one to go in and rescue civilians during that bombing, but I got mouthy to the wrong officer and they had Benten go in,” Juno snapped before he could stop himself. “He was fast, sure, but he wasn’t faster than the bomb. I would’ve made it. Maybe. Probably. And if I hadn’t, he’d go on and be the face of all of this bullshit, and he wasn’t a mess, so hell, people like us could probably get married by now if that bomb had hit the right goddamned twin.”

“Juno,” Nureyev breathed.

Juno swallowed, shaking his head. The same familiar burning that had threatened his throat and the backs of his eyes returned, and just for the sake of something to dig his fingers into, he squeezed at the bottom hem of the blouse he brought for Nureyev.

“I know it’s bad,” he winced. “I’ve been trying to get better. That’s why I kept my head down for so long. If I didn’t touch anything, I couldn’t let myself get hurt by it.”

Juno had been too busy squeezing his eyes shut to realize Nureyev had crossed the room. With exhaustion and the frayed ends of his nerves preoccupying him, he couldn’t find any part of himself to protest when Nureyev’s arms, firm, yet gentle, guided him over to the bed to take a seat.

“My dear,” Nureyev began gingerly. “That’s just the opposite extreme.”

“I know,” Juno sighed. “Like I said. I don’t want to sit around my entire life feeling miserable about this.”

“You don’t have to,” Nureyev offered with a squeeze of his arm.

“I can’t just turn it off like that,” Juno shook his head. “It’s a long road.”

“Not so long,” Nureyev returned firmly. “It looks to me like you’ve already taken the first step. That doesn’t mean you don’t still have miles to go, or that the dirt from the start might not still be on your shoes, but it’s important nonetheless.”

“What?”

“What we’re doing to work against the Guardian Angel System must count for something,” Peter added. “As far as I know, you’re trying to make the world a better place because it’s a place you want to live in. I find that admirable.”

Juno nodded.

“That uh—that means a lot,” he returned. “Thank you. I know it’s probably going to be frustrating as all hell, ‘cause I can’t fix this overnight, and—”

Nureyev shook his head.

“What can I do for you right now?” Nureyev asked gently. “Even if it’s just something small that will make you feel better in the moment.”

When Juno managed to open his eyes again, he found Nureyev at his side, squeezing his fingers in one hand while the other arm draped neatly over his shoulder. If his gaze had been soft before, it was positively intimate now, a tentative smile testing itself out upon his lips.

“Can I see your face?”

Nureyev blinked.

“I’m sorry if that was overstepping, I just—”

Nureyev shook his head, and by the time he was done, Peter Ransom had all but vanished.

It seemed he had been true to his word, rather than presenting some touched-up variant of Peter Nureyev. Crows feet dug into the skin at the corners of his eyes, while an asymmetrical frown line haunted one side of lips Juno realized he had never known in their true form, only through scars and disguises and under the practiced guise of Ransom. The circles under his eyes were deep and tired and the slight flush of exertion still hung high in his cheeks.

Juno was pretty convinced he was looking at the most beautiful man in the world.

“Well,” Nureyev swallowed. “Here I am. I doubt this is going to do anything to fix how you feel about your own safety, but—”

“It’s nice just having you here,” Juno admitted. 

“I’m glad to hear it,” Nureyev smiled.

Juno couldn’t help a soft sigh when he realized that Nureyev’s smile was just a little lopsided.

“I promise you, I didn’t just join in on your super dangerous save the world plot thing because I wanted the danger or whatever,” Juno breathed. “I think I’m gonna minimize a lot of damage doing this. To me, you, and a whole lot of other people who don’t know they’re counting on us.”

Nureyev nodded, squeezing his hand.

“Will you tell me if it feels like I’m asking too much of you?”

“Yeah,” Juno nodded. “Yeah, I will. And, Nureyev, can I ask you something?”

Nureyev hummed attentively.

“Why don’t you always—you know—wear your face?”

Nureyev grimaced.

“I don’t particularly like it, that’s all,” he said, a little too shortly. Seeming to realize this, he pressed on. “My apologies for the tone, detective, I just think you would be surprised at how much the ability to change your face does for your self esteem. It started for protection, of course, and then, well, I picked up a particular eye for detail.”

“Are you more comfortable as Ransom?”

“He’s easiest,” Nureyev sighed. “A kind of memorized version of decent. Like a familiar makeup look, if you will.”

“Would you like it if I didn’t ask to see it?”

Nureyev swallowed.

“You don’t have to say no,” Juno added quickly.

“It’s nice to share with someone,” he admitted, and for the first time Juno could remember, Nureyev’s voice had gone small. “If I’m not going to appreciate it, someone might as well.”

“I don’t know if I can make you like it as much as I do,” Juno started slowly. “I don’t know if that’s just something I can change but I—well, I think it’s a good face.”

“Thank you, Juno,” Nureyev chuckled. “I appreciate your prose.”

“Shut up,” Juno snorted. “You have a good nose and stuff.”

“Good nose and stuff,” Nureyev repeated, still laughing. “I might just put that on my gravestone someday.”

“Nureyev,” Juno groaned.

“I’m just saying that you should be more specific if you’re going to sing my praises,” Nureyev huffed, crossing his arms over his chest and feigning offense.

“Well, I think your eyes are really good for eyes,” Juno offered.

“Juno, dear, you’re going to give me an aneurysm,” Nureyev complained.

“I mean, in general, they’re just kind of gross parts of the body when you really think about them, but yours are—well, take it from a lady who doesn’t like eyes very much. They’re good ones,” Juno protested, feeling himself soften when Nureyev did as well.

“That was a joke, you know,” Nureyev returned, even though that lopsided smile slid back over his face. “You don’t have to spend all night complimenting every part of me you like just because our opinions on the matter of my face differ.”

“See, that’s the thing about me, Nureyev,” Juno chuckled. “I’m stubborn as hell, and I don’t think I’m gonna give in until I’ve won this argument.”

“Well,” Nureyev laughed. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“I like your lips a lot,” Juno began, and though Nureyev leaned in so he might learn them by experience, Juno merely caught them under the touch of his thumb, letting his fingertips worship the shape where his mouth had so often lingered.

“Juno,” Nureyev breathed.

“Your face—the cheek, I mean—it’s got such a nice shape to it,” Juno added, letting his hand wander, even if his eyes stayed locked on Peter’s matching gaze, soft and sweet and wanting. “And your nose and your eyes and the way you kind of squint when you laugh.”

“It means twice as much when coming from a lady such as yourself,” Nureyev chuckled, though he trailed off entirely when Juno’s lips came to rest upon his jaw, doing nothing more than trailing a reverent line of kisses.

“Your jaw,” he murmured, his soft benedictions becoming harder and harder to think of when Nureyev’s hand came to rest in the curls at the back of his head. “God, who the hell let you look like this? It should be illegal.”

“Juno,” he breathed, as if he were blessing the word. “Please.”

“Please what?”

“Keep going, dear.”

Juno couldn’t think of anything else he would rather do.

“The way you look better in my clothes than me,” Juno snorted, though the laugh was brief and soft and lost somewhere along the graceful slope of Nureyev’s collarbone as his lips brushed further down the plane of skin revealed by the still-open button down. “I don’t remember these.”

“I try to keep most of my scars covered,” Nureyev winced. “I’m sorry—”

“Shh,” Juno murmured, letting his hands guide Nureyev back onto the bed properly and his lips return in reverence to the pair of silver lines. “They’re gorgeous. I’m happy you feel comfortable enough to share this part of yourself with me”

“God, what did I ever do to deserve you?”

Juno didn’t have an answer. Instead, he kissed Peter Nureyev properly, and if he thought about it, for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well they had a nice scene you know what that means for the next couple of chapters
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill steal half your socks so none of them match
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man this one is so soft mostly
> 
> Content warnings for food/drink mention, alcohol mention, non-consensual drug use (generic villain brand knockout gas), passing references to sexual content,

“Duke and Dahlia Rose, huh?” Juno snorted.

Even though Nureyev was holding him on his arm as if they were attending a ball, rather than an elaborate bribery of anyone willing to throw money at the Guardian Angel System, he still fixed Juno with a glare.

“They were the only guests not coming,” Nureyev huffed. “I couldn’t exactly be picky when sneaking into such an event, now could I?”

“Dahlia Rose, though?”

“Not every name can be as lovely as Juno,” Nureyev smiled, pausing to nod his head to a passing gentleman who seemed to almost recognize him as the man whose photos he had attempted to emulate.

“It sounds like a stripper name,” Juno snorted.

“Well, I’m sure Dahlia Rose would make quite the lovely stripper then,” Nureyev chuckled.

“Good luck seeing that,” Juno laughed. “I can run in heels, but if you wanna see me dance, you’re gonna have to pay me.”

“Yes, Juno, that’s how strippers work,” Nureyev returned patiently, having to lean over and feign a particularly domestic smile to hide the words from the other guests.

“Shut up,” Juno groaned. “Don’t mansplain strippers to me.”

“My deepest apologies, my love,” Nureyev lamented. “However could I repay you?”

“In ones and fives,” Juno snorted.

“Dahlia Rose!” Nureyev exclaimed, a hand flying to his chest to clutch at the pearls he insisted Duke Rose, that debonair gentleman who just happened to wear all his silk button downs the same way Nureyev did, would do so. “You’re lucky I love you, darling.”

“Love you too, Duke,” Juno smiled, though a part of him he no longer considered weak or cruel or traitorous twinged at just how much he wanted to be saying those exact words with someone else’s name on the end.

Duke Rose wasn’t an eyesore, not by a long shot. Nureyev cleaned up the scraggly bits of facial hair he didn’t take a fancy to and found a black silk shirt with just enough buttons undone for Juno to tell that he had done nothing to cover up a valentine-pink bruise poking up from his lower sternum. Juno had a sneaking suspicion that the actual Duke Rose wasn’t half as handsome as Nureyev, but then again, Nureyev could make anything look good.

Dahlia, on the other hand, was one of those wealthy individuals who liked to keep his pictures out of anybody’s grasp and his face out of the common knowledge. Thankfully for Nureyev, that gave him the exact chance he needed to dote over Juno’s suit and tie and makeup. 

Juno recognized the exact focused glare Nureyev used when agonizing over his own appearance, and it hadn’t shown itself when he had straightened and re-straightened Juno’s tie, seemingly picked to match the color of Nureyev’s love bite. Instead, he had worn a domestic look atop his own face, crows feet and all. If Juno didn’t know better, he would have suspected Nureyev was trying to sabotage their mission just by making his knees weak.

“How soon do you think we should leave for the storage room?” Juno hissed behind a hand.

“Dahlia, you’re too much!” Nureyev cried, though he returned the whisper as he continued. “I’d say once we know we’ve been seen here and accounted for. Then, I think we ought to make quite a show of being here and then leave in a manner that suggests nobody who wants to spare their eyes should follow us.”

“Is this another goddamn excuse to dance with me during a heist?”

Nureyev chuckled.

“My, detective, it seems you’ve bested me once again,” he grinned. Juno’s heart skipped a beat when he realized it was just a little bit lopsided. “Are you going to let such a low-down coercive individual sway you into such blatant hedonism?”

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Juno shrugged. “Your lead or mine?”

Nureyev paused to ponder that for a moment.

“I will say, I quite enjoyed leading last time, though I suspect if you dance as well as you—”

“Well, now you’re short enough to reach, so it doesn’t matter,” Juno cut Nureyev off as the band dragged its way towards a lively number and Juno dragged Nureyev towards the floor.

“That still doesn’t answer my—oh!” Nureyev cried as Juno walked him through a spin. “Dahlia!”

“God, you’re cute,” Juno snorted. “Even as some greasy old white guy.”

“Beg pardon?” Nureyev sputtered, though he seemed all too happy to let Juno take the lead as they began an easy dance, a little too caught up in their own conversation to show off.

“Well, I mean—”

“Dear,” Nureyev warned.

“I just don’t think Duke Rose actually looks this nice in person, that’s all,” Juno huffed. “And you look really nice right now.”

“Are you trying to twist this into some kind of compliment? I’ll have you know—dammit, Dahlia,” Nureyev sputtered as Juno sent him through a rapidfire series of turns, which he had to admit, Nureyev executed quite well. “Who on earth taught you to dance like that?”

“Thank my brother for that one,” Juno snorted. “He used to do that to me.”

“How comforting to know that my lover treats me like his brother,” Nureyev sniffed, giving a distasteful look down his nose.

“Shut up,” Juno snorted. “I think you’d get his approval though. He liked just about everyone and you’re both the same brand of jerk.”

“Dahlia Rose, I will drive us home—”

“That was a compliment,” Juno added, threatening to raise his arm for another spin until Nureyev gave him a world-weary look that sent them into a gale of laughter that nearly made them collide into a nearby couple.

“Apologies!” Nureyev called as he began to escort Juno from the floor. “You know how my Dahlia gets around champagne.”

“When do I get to make up mean stuff about your alias?” Juno huffed, more than happy to be all but dragged from the dance floor as the song came to an end.

When he was righted on his feet once more, he found that he had been deposited in a private enough corner of the show room with time for their retreat and plenty more time before the investors were to take their tour. He also noted that Nureyev seemed to be taking extra care to regard the security cameras when it came to Juno’s face in particular.

This had the additional benefit of a moment alone to breathe and be themselves, rather than waffling in and out of the act of Duke and Dahlia Rose. Despite this, Juno couldn’t help but feel that even though the both of them wore disguises and Nureyev had hidden his face entirely, this evening had been one of the nicest he had spent with him since the first shattering of walls that might as well have been a love confession.

They caught their breaths. They reviewed their plans. They ran through timings to ensure the security cameras would catch no head nor tails of them when they slipped out of the hall and into the staff corridors that both of them memorized from Juno’s blueprints. Finally, Nureyev offered Juno his arm and began their stroll towards their exit.

“Flirt with me,” Nureyev hissed. “I need to make sure nobody sees any reason to follow us.”

“Now?”

“Violently.”

“I’m gonna warn you right now, this isn’t gonna be pretty,” Juno grimaced.

“All the better,” Nureyev swallowed, though from his face, he could have been wishing him godspeed.

“You must be one of those crab cakes on the tables over there, because you look good enough to eat,” Juno returned, regretting every additional word.

“Oh, Juno,” Nureyev winced.

“Why don’t you do it then?”

“Dahlia,” Nureyev all but purred into his ear, just a little too loud.

“If you make me derail this heist—”

“My love, I haven’t been able to tear my eyes from you all evening,” Nureyev added, ensuring Juno got his point when he rested both of his hands on Juno’s shoulders and leaned forward to give the side of his neck a kiss. “You’re irresistible, my dear.”

“We’ve got thirty seconds until our window,” Juno hissed.

“You’re a dream, Dahlia,” Nureyev continued, giving Juno’s shoulder a squeeze so he wouldn’t laugh when a senator walked by. “A jewel upon this earth. My heart is in your hands, my dearest.”

“Ten bucks says you won’t say something weird,” Juno whispered.

“How much time is left?”

“Enough to prove me wrong,” Juno snorted. “I saw your apartment. You could use ten bucks.”

“I beg your pardon,” Nureyev tried and failed to quiet his gasp. Juno wished he could do more than flit his eyes over, for from the sound of Nureyev’s resigned grumble, he was going through quite the impressive facial journey. “Fine. Fracture my spine, dear heart.”

“Duke!” Juno cackled out loud, just in time to drag Nureyev into the hallway by the wrist and, being a lady of his word, slap a ten dollar bill into his hands.

“Juno Steel, you’re lucky I love you,” Nureyev huffed, though he pocketed the bill regardless.

“Fracture your spine?” Juno sputtered, trying his best to choke down a laugh. “I asked you to flirt with me and you asked for murder. I’m a lady of the law, you know I can’t do that.”

“Juno,” Nureyev sighed. “You asked for absurd. I merely delivered.”

“How bad did you need those ten bucks?”

“It’s of no matter,” Nureyev huffed. “Juno Steel, you have turned me into quite the strange man.”

“It builds character or whatever,” Juno snorted as they turned into the mouth of their thankfully short walk through the staff hallways. “Two lefts and a right, right?”

“Correct,” Nureyev answered slowly. “Then we merely need to shut down the control board and make our escape.”

“You really think it’s going to be that easy?”

Nureyev shrugged.

“Of course,” he smiled. “Give or take a few life threatening perils.”

“Comforting.”

Somewhere between the mouth of the staff corridors and the last stretch of hall, the blank canvas of concrete dead ended in a single scanner, embedded in the wall. 

The face of Duke Rose had disappeared, only to be replaced by the Peter Nureyev Juno knew and loved. He doubted it had been for anything other than focus’s sake, but Juno felt comfort rise in his chest nonetheless.

When they reached the scanner, Nureyev closed his eyes, knit his brow, and froze.

“I thought you said you had a key?” Juno hissed.

“I do,” Nureyev murmured.

He raised a hand from his pocket, twitching his fingers until they shrank slightly, the fingertips going blunter and the nails growing shorter until they mirrored those of Rossignol. After a moment’s pause, he took a deep breath and pressed one fingertip to the machine.

“Full hand required according to the October 11, 1965 update,” a cool, feminine voice rang out, seemingly from all around.

“Dammit,” Nureyev hissed. “If she changed the security as of last week, she must be onto us.”

“Or paranoid,” Juno grimaced. “Maybe another try won’t hurt.”

Nureyev took a deep breath, squeezed his eyes shut, and with his one outstretched hand shaking, pressed it to the screen. 

The scanner beeped, glowing a strange green color, then beeped again. Nureyev winced at the noise, as if it had been the tolling of funeral bells, rather than a simple sound from a machine. Juno couldn’t help but lay a hand on his arm, if not to steady him, just to give it a little supportive squeeze.

“Request received, Director Rossignol,” the machine answered, and as if the halls themselves were taking a shuddering breath, they peeled aside to allow Juno and Nureyev to enter what appeared to be a viewing room over the depths of something akin to an airplane hangar.

“What is this?” Nureyev breathed as he took a step over the threshold of the staff halls and into the white, tile floored viewing area, flanked on every side by bulky machines with far too many lights and buttons and screens to keep track of.

“Looks like some kind of control room,” Juno nodded. “Is that—”

“The Guardian Angel System,” Nureyev confirmed as he peered over one of the dashboards and into the great, spacious room down below.

“Holy shit,” Juno breathed.

“Indeed.”

Juno had expected a few machines with the capability to hover. However, he hadn’t expected a fleet and the materials to make hundreds more, all lined up and ready to self sustain and do exactly what Rossignol’s coding told them to. He tried and failed to swallow at the sight of their fanglike rotors and the sharp hiss of the few experimentally hovering ones. 

He had expected the room to bear a chill, as was the case for most places of research. However, he had not expected all the blood in his body to freeze.

“So what now?” Juno asked as somewhere, a million miles away, the door behind him began to grind shut.

“Well, there must be something we can do to these computers,” Nureyev thought aloud, though Juno still felt as if his brain was floating farther and farther from his body as he stared down the hangar floor again.

“Nureyev,” he began slowly.

“There has to be some kind of command on or off button around here somewhere,” Nureyev murmured.

“Mutants are less than one percent of the population, right?” 

“Yes?”

“However you do the math, this isn’t right. There are way too many machines, and if they’re still making more of them, that means—”

“Rossignol’s going to try to expand this project nationally,” Nureyev finished, mouth falling agape. “That would mean a national repeal of the act instead of state by state, which—”

“I’m sorry to interrupt such a lovely conversation,” the overhead speaker cut through the frigid air. “But did you really think this room wouldn’t have any other security?”

“The cameras—”

“Of course I didn’t put the cameras on those blueprints,” Rossignol returned. “Mind your heads on the way down.”

The overhead speaker fizzled out just in time for something else to fizzle into the room.

“Nureyev, are you hearing what I’m hearing?”

“There must be a way out,” Nureyev returned. “With your height, the gas is going to do a number to your system first, so I’d advise you to sit down and try to minimize potential damage.”

“That glass looks pretty hard to break to me,” Juno winced as he took a seat, trying his best to keep his head on his shoulders as the air in the room grew thin and wispy against lungs that, in a terrible trick of fate and evolution, took this as a sign to try and breathe in as much air as possible.

“Hang on for me, Juno,” Nureyev tried and failed not to slur, a hand on the wall to keep himself upright. “Are your lungs going to—”

Juno was almost certain Nureyev had something else to say, but with the corners of his vision going fuzzy, he didn’t realize Peter had ceased to speak at all until limp hands were trying to catch him where he had fallen from his chair and gingerly rest him upon the ground.

“You’re going to be fine, love,” Nureyev murmured, words crashing into each other.

Juno couldn’t remember falling from the chair. He couldn’t remember beginning to black out either. He wasn’t sure he would be able to remember anything waking up, and a small part of him prayed that he didn’t, for his lungs burned and his eyes ached and somewhere in the blur above him, Peter Nureyev was doing his damndest to shake him awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh oh sisters
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill HUG YA REAL TIGHT
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new year!! please check the content warnings this one gets heavy
> 
> Content warnings for torture, minor body horror, electric shocks, discussion of mass murder, gun violence, blood, non-consensual drug use (i.e. a sedative used pre-chapter), fire/explosions, x-men typical antimutantism

Juno’s ideal morning might have been something along the lines of breakfast in bed or sweet nothings in his ear or warm bed sheets holding a cold world at bay. He didn’t have an exact picture of it, but that didn’t seem to matter too much when instead, he woke up tied to a chair and feeling somewhere between a little sore and hit by a truck.

At the very least, he knew what to do in his situation.

Whoever had knotted his wrists hadn’t done a particularly good job of it, nor had they done a particularly good job of searching his person. All he needed to do to free his pocket knife was tug on a bit of string until the compartment on the inside of his sleeve fell open and the handle fell into his grasp. After that, a few flicks and a wince or two when he nearly jabbed himself were all he needed to free his wrists.

His second order of business was to check the room for any security cameras, though he found himself lucky in that regard. The only security was a guard, visible through the window of what appeared to be a cinderblock interrogation room, and Juno was fairly sure he was asleep.

He would have invested in a far more thorough search had he not begun to rub circulation back into his wrists and found them bearing thick cuffs of dark bruises.

From the clock on the wall, an hour should have passed since Rossignol’s gas knocked him out. In that time, the bruises should have bloomed and wilted and healed entirely. However, they continued to rear their ugly heads like festering violets upon a tombstone in their mocking hues of purple and black and yellow.

“What the hell?” Juno breathed as he shook his hands again, as if blood flow would undo the damage where his abilities had failed.

The next pain his brain managed to grasp as consciousness trickled back was a twinge in his arm, which was bared and wrenched out of the neck of his shirt at an odd angle. When he finally managed to turn a head that slowly had begun to shed its fog and ache, he groaned at the sight of an injection spot, angry and red and also bearing a nasty bruise of the same shade.

“Goddammit,” he groaned, though not loud enough to wake the guard.

He didn’t need to be a detective to piece together what had happened, but it sure didn’t hurt. 

If he was going to sneak past that guard, he couldn’t afford a mistake. He couldn’t merely take whatever injury his opponents dished out and merely try to outlast them if he wanted to live to see the next morning. Perhaps it wasn’t exactly the right time, but Juno couldn’t help a twinge of pride at the fact that he took issue with the situation.

Juno had been kidnapped enough times to know it was too easy. The knife had still been in his sleeve and enough spare hairpins still lay in the pockets to bend a makeshift lock pick out of his belongings. However, he had also been kidnapped enough times to know that walking into a second trap was almost always better than staying in the first. If a mouse walked around a mousetrap and into a room with a cat, it might still find a hole in the wall.

In the silence of the soundproofed room, the squeak of the door could have been a shriek. Juno’s blood froze in his veins, the cold sinking into his muscles and joints and nerves while his heart pounded uselessly despite it. He half expected the frantic beating of the traitorous organ to give him away altogether, but the guard merely let out another piercing snore and flopped his head over onto the other shoulder.

Juno swallowed and forced himself to take a deep breath, as if that would calm any of the electricity that had begun to sizzle at the ends of his nerves.

With a surgeon’s hands, he reached for the guard’s gun, travelling inch after fatal inch until it seemed a year had passed over the distance of a foot. When his hand finally closed around the grip, the guard shifted with an unusually deep breath and Juno wrenched his hand away as if he had been burned.

However, the guard did not stir.

Juno tucked the gun into his empty holster and gave a glance around before he could so much as leave the doorway. For once, the paranoia that chewed on the back of his brain proved itself useful, for the extra precaution gave him a moment to reach for and tilt the security camera atop the door. Regardless of which path of the strange, barely lit hallway he took, the camera would only record the ceiling.

The left and right paths seemed to be identical, save for the right’s glowing red exit sign that shone like the eyes of the kind of slime-soaked creatures he used to imagine under his bed or haunting the corners of his childhood bedroom. As tempted as he was to follow it, he doubted it would bring him any closer to the factory floor to which he needed to return to destroy the interfaces and find Nureyev.

Juno gave one last precautionary look over his shoulder before turning and hurrying down the left path of the hallway with the lightest steps he could manage in his panic. 

After a few too many incidents of turning security cameras aside and sneaking around others so his path wouldn’t be too obvious, he began to wonder if he had made a terrible mistake in coming that way at all. There weren’t any employees as far as he could see, nor were there any signs of them. Every door on every side of the hallway was locked, and those with windows only revealed dark, gaping squares that ached like holes in the fabric of reality itself.

The hallway could have been something taken out of an abandoned hospital, for all Juno cared. The floors were tiled as if to be purposefully loud, the lights were a jaundiced, flickering white, and every door and window gaped like a great, empty, sagging eye socket from a rotting face. The presence of the rooms seemed to buzz on either side of his head, whispering warnings and curses and prophecies in some language he could not seem to understand and sending a fierce shiver up his spine.

Juno was convinced it would have been better to turn around altogether until another twist in the hallway’s seemingly endless spiral brought him close enough to the factory floor to hear a muffled scream.

Even if panic stopped him in his tracks, instinct was wise enough to click on the recorder he kept in his pocket for emergencies.

“Sir, you’re going to ruin my data if you keep screaming like that,” Rossignol chided, though her voice seemed amplified and distorted in the hall that Juno was gradually realizing to be the so-called laboratory on the blueprints.

“Just tell me what you did to him,” someone panted in return, their voice so haggard Juno could barely make out the words.

“I think I liked you better gagged,” Rossignol mused. “Next test.”

Juno felt his hand tighten a little more on his gun when he realized the door to the hangar wasn’t bolted, unlike the maze of locked rooms that had preceded it. To make matters worse, it was cracked open.

He knew it was a trap. It also happened to be a very good one.

“You see, Mister Nureyev,” Rossignol began again as she pressed another button on a large remote controller of sorts that flickered a bright blue at her touch. “Just because you’ve decided not to cooperate doesn’t mean you’re not still useful. I’d hate for you to partake in a test without knowing exactly what I’m testing for.”

Nureyev remained firmly silent, trying and failing to sit up straighter in his chair. If Juno squinted through the crack in the door, he could just make out some kind of automatic handcuffing device he had long since given up fighting, for his wrists were visibly bruised, yet limp in the chair’s grasp.

“You do know what I’m testing for, correct?” Rossignol continued, pausing to jog back over to her scattered notes on the panel before turning back to her controller.

“The longest and most boring possible way to kill someone?” Nureyev huffed. 

Juno pushed the door open by another inch or so, just in time to see that Nureyev’s face showed no signs of shifting before it made a sudden and purposeful change.

The machine at his side, which seemed to be a fragment of one of the disassembled pieces of the Guardian Angel System that littered the floor of the assembly portion of the hangar buzzed with a faint blue light that filled the room with the stench of ozone. Juno winced, missing the second in which it fired at Nureyev. The part of him still tempted to turn around and run nearly reared its ugly head when Peter managed to quiet his scream with a patch of morphed, distorted skin he had pulled over his mouth.

“That was the low setting,” Rossignol continued. “Are you dead yet? I need to know the exact minimum voltage so we can estimate our fuel and budget requirements.”

Nureyev’s mouth shifted back to its normal form to sputter out a gasp for air.

If Juno had to guess, even the one tiny act of shifting had taken the majority of his focus, for he had made no effort to make any of the rest of himself presentable. The bags under his eyes were an achy purple, while his brow was streaked with a sheen of sweat. Those familiar crows feet grew deeper when he squeezed his eyes shut and winced, entire body tensed in preparation for the next test as Rossignol checked her notes once more.

“Not dead yet,” Rossignol murmured as her pen scribbled along the page. 

With her back turned, Juno managed to slip through the door and behind one of the nearest machines.

Even if he could no longer see the scene before him in his search for some kind of escape, he could still smell the choking rot of ozone and hear the whirring and muffled yells and sputtered curses and gasps. He tried his best to move quickly, but it seemed as if his every footfall were the ringing of a snare drum in the great, empty room.

“Pity. I thought my tests would have moved past rats by now,” Rossignol continued over the sound of Nureyev’s muffled yell. “This kind of weapon’s technology has been completely untested up to this point. You should be honored, Mister Nureyev.”

Juno made a turn behind a pair of machines that was just a little too sloppy. However, the only eye he caught was Nureyev’s, and Nureyev seemed to make a point of looking away as quickly as possible.

“Why are you doing this?” He managed to choke between gasping breaths.

“You’re just trying to buy yourself time at this point,” Rossignol chuckled.

“I like being alive,” Nureyev huffed.

“You won’t for long,” Rossingol returned evenly. “It’s for your own good, you know.”

“What?”

“Well, by my count, it’ll take another few decades to start lightening legislation for you mutants, and even then, I doubt what you’ll get then is much better,” Rossignol continued. “With the Guardian Angel System, there won’t be any reason to go to the trouble of arresting all the active mutants if we can just keep an eye on them. If I can sell my idea to enough investors, Hyperion City might not be the only utopia for people like you. Can’t you see it? A whole nation, completely safe.”

“I don’t usually get told things are for my own good while someone is actively attempting to murder me,” Nureyev grimaced.

“A few good men usually die in the pursuit of great science, Mister Nureyev. It would be better for all of us if you learned that.”

“If you touch him—”

“We’re doing the control first,” Rossignol cut him off. “For now, I’m testing a side project on him to see how long it lasts.”

“What the hell did you do to him?”

The machine fired again, and rather than replying, Rossignol merely smiled while Nureyev writhed. When the electricity seemed done having its way with him, he merely gasped and sputtered for breath, knowing better than to ask again.

If Juno could just get his aim right around the base of the next monitor, he was fairly sure he could shoot Nureyev’s hands free. He hated to think about it for too long, but had Nureyev been able to move his hands at all, the shot would have been a lot more difficult.

He took a breath while Rossignol scribbled down the last of her notes. He clicked the recorder off. He fired.

It took approximately five seconds for all hell to break loose.

Juno had expected their reunion to be a little softer than Nureyev springing from the machine like a man reborn and throwing his newly freed fist into Rossignol’s jaw. However, it seemed Peter would always find one way or another to surprise him, regardless of the situation. 

“Juno, dear God,” Nureyev breathed once he was sure Rossignol was unconscious. “Are you alright?”

“Got a hell of a shot,” Juno grimaced. “My wrists are staying bruised, which I don’t think is good, but at least I have an idea of who’s responsible.”

“Are you going to be alright?” Nureyev asked, tripping and tumbling over the words in a way that made Juno’s heart clench. For Peter Nureyev, words seemed to be as second nature as the alteration of his face. To see him grasping at them with trembling hands made Juno’s gut wrench in a way he didn’t want to think about.

“Yeah, so long as I don’t get too injured on the way out of here,” Juno confirmed. “Gives me another reason not to run headfirst into danger.”

Nureyev managed a faint and crooked smile.

“I missed you,” he admitted.

“Why don’t you miss me once we blow this place up?”

“What about the investors?” Nureyev asked, though he followed Juno’s half-jogged pace at a slumping one as he made his way over to the portion of the floor dedicated to assembly and repair.

“If we keep it controlled enough, we should be able to do some decent damage and run,” Juno returned. “Looks like they’ve got gas and lighters. Should be enough to fry a machine or two. I don’t wanna stay here too long. You look like you—uh—need medical attention.”

“I’m glad to have a partner who cherishes me,” Nureyev returned flatly, though he tossed Juno a lighter from the nearest workbench anyway. “I think I can manage most of the gas if you do what you can to get that door open.”

Juno nodded, and even though he turned every few seconds to ensure that Nureyev was still standing and breathing and checking off every other basic requirement for being alive. The door wasn’t particularly difficult to open, even if he did struggle somewhat with the switch in the wall.

The garage door rattled open, letting the smoky city evening creep inside and balance the piercing light of the hangar. Juno still jogged back to Nureyev’s side to ensure his end of the mission went well.

“Juno,” he chuckled, a little too shakily, but still without malice. “I’m not going to fall over and shatter. I’m more than just a pretty face, you know.”

“That’s good to hear coming from you,” Juno smiled, holding out the lighter once Nureyev set down the last of the gasoline. “Wanna do the honors?”

“I would love to,” Nureyev all but beamed.

He took the lighter with both hands, for neither would cease twitching enough to hold it on their own. Juno did his best to stomach a wince as he fumbled over the switch again and again until finally, a flame bloomed between his shaking fingers.

However, when he chucked it into the nearest machine, he did so with one hand and all the force of a pitcher. Nureyev took Juno by the arm just in time to stumble backwards as the sudden heat of fire spat through the room.

Even if sense told him to turn and run from the flame, however slowly it spread, Juno couldn’t help but share a shaky smile with Nureyev. He didn’t care if Nureyev leaned a little too heavily on him as they walked or took a little too much time trying to drag himself towards the door. If all went right over the course of the last few feet, they would make it outside just in time for fire to close the exit behind them, and they would have escaped. He would have saved the day and done it in style and managed to keep himself alive and happy to be so.

This would have been the case had the stench of smoke and heat of flame not dragged Rossignol from her feigned slumber. Juno barely had time to notice it until he paused a few too many feet from the door, just in time for Rossignol’s gun to crack through the air with all the volume of the sparking and sputtering machines.

If Juno had managed to hang onto consciousness a few moments longer, he would have heard a shaking, stuttering beg for him to stay alive and for that serum that choked at his blood to have ebbed away. He might have seen Nureyev trying and failing to drag the both of them away from the ever approaching fire as he bled and bled and bled.

He might have heard the roof threaten to crack or felt Nureyev’s hands shaking uselessly against the shoulders of a suit jacket they had picked out together. He might have felt the spitting heat of electrical fire as it slithered closer and closer to the both of them as they escaped at the speed of a nightmare.

Juno experienced none of these things, however, and merely bled from the hole where his eye used to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well. way to kick off the new year with a bang. also I KNOW none of this data is actually usable because she didn't give him breaks between tests. i KNoW. she's trying to k i l l him i dont know how much she actually cares about sciencing at this point im like 78% sure she really is just trying to find an excuse to torture him. the only good girlboss evil scientist out there is Doc Oc aka Liv anyway off my soap box
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or idk ill like cry or something havent decided yet
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, lemme tell you all the worst is over!!
> 
> Content warnings for hospitalization, referenced eye trauma (vague bc i cant do eye shit either), a character is briefly assumed dead, references to torture, aftermath of injury

“One unidentified man is still missing from the wreckage of the fire at Rossignol Enterprises headquarters, though the two dead have been identified as Madame Rossignol herself and long-missing mutant Peter Nureyev. Police currently have no suspects, but after a disturbing audio recording was found dropped at the scene, a theory of foul play is emerging,” an even voice that felt too fast and too loud and too piercing all at once rang through the room.

When Juno managed to grasp some of his still-blurred vision, he tried and failed to raise his head, only to find that it felt fuzzy and cotton-stuffed. The familiar buzz of painkillers swarmed in his brain, which felt like a rock at the center of his skull.

Somewhere nearby, a small, boxy television was playing the news. However, with his vision swimming from the aftermath of anesthetic and every part of him seeming to ache with a slow and dragging throb, the words all seemed to bounce off his head, stunning him whenever he tried to listen too closely.

“Oh, thank God, you’re awake,” someone nearby murmured.

Juno wasn’t sure what he expected, but from the sound of it, the nurse closed the door. He tried to flip his head over to try and see whoever had closed the door, but the nurse, a tall, blurry man with red hair, hurried over to right his head upon the pillow.

“Don’t move too much,” the nurse said quietly.

“‘M not concussed,” Juno slurred. “You don’t need to talk so quiet.”

“I’m just being careful,” the nurse continued. “TV on or off?”

“Is it about the fire?”

The nurse grimaced. Juno felt he almost could have recognized the expression, but with his head drowning somewhere between pain and painkillers, he couldn’t quite put a finger on where he knew the look.

“I’m afraid so,” he sighed.

“In a continuance of strange evidence surrounding the case, the corpse of Peter Nureyev appears to have gone missing shortly after identification. His autopsy—”

The nurse turned the television off before the reporter could say another word, leaving nothing but an all-too familiar stench of ozone and a green haze around the screen. All Juno could do was stare as his last look at Peter Nureyev, a mugshot from at least twenty years prior, fizzled out until all that was left of his two-week lover was an imprint dying in the only eye he had left.

“Juno,” the nurse began gently. He reached to lay a hand on Juno’s shoulder, but he wrenched it away. “Careful. I don’t know how delicate you should be with yourself.”

“What the hell happened?” Juno all but spat.

“I doubt I would be the best one to recount the story,” the nurse returned.

“I don’t care,” Juno returned as bluntly as he could with his words blurring and his head spinning and nothing in the world choosing to make sense.

“The medical staff found a recorder in your pocket and turned it over to the police, from whom a recording was leaked to the press,” the nurse began to explain slowly.

“Did you see me ask about the goddamn recording?”

The nurse sighed.

“Later would be a better time—”

“I just got my eye shot out, I’d say I’m entitled to ask for an explanation.”

“You’ve been in a coma for days, love,” the nurse slipped.

Juno froze.

“You—no, this can’t be happening,” he sputtered, shaking his head.

“You’re under strict surveillance,” the nurse, whose mannerisms and crows feet and smile and nose shape quickly began to fall into place. “I think it’s best to remain hostile with me for the time being. They’re not reporting you as a suspect quite yet, but I know the HCPD have been trying to find an excuse to arrest you for some time.”

“You’re alive,” Juno breathed. Nureyev squeezed his hand.

“If Peter Nureyev were, hypothetically, alive,” Nureyev began slowly, though a half-smile had begun to slide over his face. “I promise you, he would never have picked red hair.”

“Shut the hell up,” Juno snorted.

“That’s much better. Now, I’m supposed to run you through your condition and definitely not smuggle you into a vehicle and assist you into an escape into hiding,” Nureyev continued. 

“You have somewhere we can go?”

“I have a pair of aliases and an old friend who owes me a house-shaped favor a state or two over,” Nureyev smiled, though he let it drift away after a glance towards the security camera above his chair. “They’re married, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t think I do, actually,” Juno returned.

Nureyev squeezed his hand once more.

“Excellent,” he grinned. “What a shame that camera’s keeping an eye on the both of us. It feels like years since I held you last.”

“How long was I out?”

“Four days, at least,” Nureyev sighed. 

“Four?” Juno sputtered, though it made sense with the heavy weight in his bones.

Nureyev merely nodded.

“I only managed to sneak in after the first few. I had to play corpse for quite a bit. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to feign death with the right amount of bones poking out. They don’t even check.”

Juno feigned a gag.

“You’re so gross,” he grimaced.

“I love you too, dear,” Nureyev chuckled. “I suppose now we just kill time until I know your legs are going to work well enough to get you out of here.”

“They’ll be fine,” Juno shrugged, though his face fell after he stretched one leg and his knee made a sound like a gunshot. “You think that’s okay?”

“I’m not a doctor, Juno, I just play one on TV,” Nureyev joked, though he legitimately leaned up from his chair to ensure Juno’s leg hadn’t broken in half.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Juno huffed.

“Like what?”

“I dunno—some kind of thing you’re—” Juno broke off to feign a shudder. “Studying.”

“Well, Juno, the thing is, you’re quite the fine specimen,” Nureyev smiled.

“Shut up.”

Nureyev hummed, considering the matter, then broke into a laugh again.

“I’m just glad that you’re awake, dear.”

Juno swallowed and nodded, pausing for an unanticipated wince when his head burned at the movement. Nureyev, quick as ever, laid his hands on Juno’s head to guide him back to the pillow.

“Shh, try not to hurt yourself, love,” he murmured, hands already fixing Juno’s hair on the sides where it had gone flat. Juno certainly wasn’t going to complain, for the gentle scratches of his fingertips along Juno’s scalp were some of the only decent sensations going on above his neck. “There you are, dear. Just breathe for me, alright?”

Juno nodded, a little more gingerly this time.

“Perfect,” Nureyev smiled. “Do you think you can go soon?”

“I dunno,” Juno mumbled, eyes shut at the pleasant sensation along his scalp. “Are you gonna keep playing with my hair if I say no?”

Nureyev huffed, though not unkindly.

“Juno, once we’re out of here, I’ll play with your hair every day for the rest of your life,” he said softly.

“Yeah, alright, I’m up, I’m up,” Juno groaned, one elbow planted into the mattress to try and lift himself. When he began to fall for just a moment, Nureyev caught him with arms that had steadied over the course of a few days of healing. “Thanks, Nureyev.”

“Anything for you, my love,” Nureyev smiled, using Juno’s head to block the kiss he pressed to his forehead from the camera.

“You’re so gross,” Juno snorted, though it still came out pained while Nureyev helped him attempt to stand once more.

“I take pride in it, dear,” Nureyev returned. “How are your legs?”

“Working,” Juno grimaced.

Every joint felt like it was halfway through cracking and breaking, stiff and cold and shuddering as he tried and failed to take a stumbling step on his own. Nureyev kept his guiding touch constant, so no fall was without a gentle set of arms to right him once more. Eventually, the ache began to subside, and as much as Juno loved standing with Nureyev all but embracing him upright, he took a few of his own steps once he knew his legs had recovered.

“Thank God,” Nureyev breathed. “Take my arm as we walk. The worse you look, the less they’ll suspect us. And hide your face, would you?”

Juno nodded, turning his head in towards Nureyev’s chest and doing his best to slump alongside him as they turned to make their way down the hall.

“Wait, where the hell are my clothes?” Juno hissed after a second.

“Ruined, I’m afraid,” Nureyev lamented. “I have a change in my car, though. Your coat included. Everything’s been packed. I even broke into your office to look for personal effects.”

“The pros of loving a conman,” Juno snorted.

“I am a thief, thank you very much,” Nureyev huffed, though it was without any true malice.

Juno merely chuckled, staying a little too quiet as Nureyev hurried him past a pair of officers in the hall. With his head turned as such, he couldn’t see much more than the front of Nureyev’s scrubs, but before he knew it, the sight changed to a back parking lot of the hospital, and soon after, the passenger seat of Nureyev’s car.

“Oh, thank God,” Nureyev breathed as he all but collapsed into the driver’s seat, his appearance also relaxing. “I have a tote of clothes in the back if you want to change.”

“Love to,” Juno returned. Even if he didn’t particularly feel like climbing over seats and suitcases alike to search for the bag, he was sick enough of his hospital gown to take Nureyev up on his offer.

“Your abilities are back, if you were wondering,” Nureyev added as Juno muscled his way into a shirt. “I had a dreadful time with your IVs.”

“I don’t wanna think about that,” Juno grimaced. “Is that why I only lost the one eye instead of—you know—”

“It’s why you still have a beating heart,” Nureyev returned frankly, though Juno could see his face visibly fall in the front mirror. “Dragging you out of there—God, I don’t know how we both made it. I’ve still been twitching on and off for the last few days.”

“Are you sure you’re good to drive?”

“Which one of us has depth perception, dear?”

“Whatever,” Juno huffed upon climbing back into the front seat. “Are you sure you’re doing okay?”

Nureyev swallowed. It seemed this had been the exact question he had been dreading.

“Well,” he choked out to begin. Juno put a hand on his shoulder to pause him.

“If you don’t want to—”

He swallowed again, shaking his head.

“You’ve already cracked the dam, my love,” he returned with a watery chuckle.

Juno climbed past the armrest to pull him into a tight hug, the strain on his spine and legs and arms be damned. Nureyev received him with near desperation, his head buried into the shoulder of Juno’s coat, which he only then realized had been cleaned of blood. 

“Hey,” Juno started softly. “You’re alright.”

“You’re alright,” Nureyev repeated, words strained. “God, I thought I was going to lose you. When I lost the tape, I was almost certain that there was no chance for any of it to go right. I thought you were dead, and for nothing, I—”

“I’m right here.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose you are,” Nureyev breathed.

Juno kissed the top of his head, and eventually, after a few more minutes of the rib-cracking hug, Nureyev went quiet and somehow dragged himself away to wipe his reddened eyes on the neck of his scrubs.

“Well,” he sputtered out, a strained laugh on the end of his voice. “I suppose you’ve seen me at my worst.”

“You’re allowed to cry.”

“I’m still getting there, love,” he sighed. “Are you sure you want this for the rest of your life?”

Once Juno managed to make his way back into his seat, he squeezed Nureyev’s hand, trying and failing to find something romantic to say.

“I mean, we could always get fake divorced, if you want,” he said instead.

Nureyev broke into a laugh that Juno would have found hideous if he weren’t too shocked by the fact that first, Peter Nureyev of all people could produce such a noise, and second, he had somehow made him snort. It also helped that his cheeks had flushed and a hand had fallen over his mouth and his head had toppled back against the headrest, leaving the image of him overall, one of the cutest things Juno had seen in some time.

“Juno Steel,” Nureyev chuckled when he finally seemed to find his composure. “Don’t you dare ever change.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHEW theyre SAFE fuckin finally
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill idk i dont feel like threatening you just drink water
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys....... this is so soft. no content warnings just. just vibe with me

“My love!” Someone still pretending to be Alexander Noble called from the door. “I have a surprise for you, dear.”

Juno, who had been waiting a little too impatiently, counted to five before retrieving the door. Regardless of how much time he had been feigning marriage to the love of his life, he didn’t want to seem that desperate. 

Those five seconds could have been an eternity, though the entire ache of the wait was done away with when Juno opened the door and was met with the sight of the second face Nureyev wore most often. It was a miracle he recognized it, however, for Nureyev had hidden most of his face and torso behind a cartoonishly large bouquet of flowers.

“Nureyev,” Juno chuckled as he stepped back to let him in. “You didn’t cheat on me or anything, did you?”

“Well, Mrs. Noble,” Nureyev began, a faux-lamentation soliloquizing in his shuddering tone as he stepped inside and kicked his shoes off. “I’m ashamed to tell you that I have. The most beautiful man I’ve ever met, in fact. A certain lady named Juno Steel has come to occupy my every waking thought, and though I know it would be a shame to leave this marriage of convenience, I think it is only honest of me to tell you that I am plagued to have fallen irreversibly for him.”

Juno rolled his eyes.

“Well, I’ll see if you can ever make it up to me,” he snorted.

Nureyev tucked the bouquet under his elbow so he could sweep Juno’s hand into his, pressing kiss after kiss to the back of his hand and climbing up his wrist until Juno had to give him a joking shove away.

“You’re so gross,” he teased.

“My dear, I am nothing if not devoted to my wife.”

“You just said you were cheating on me,” Juno huffed. “You’re a filthy liar, that’s what you are.”

“You wound me, love,” Nureyev gasped.

“Yeah, well why don’t you let me patch you up after we get these flowers in a vase?” Juno laughed, all too happy to let Nureyev take him by the arm as they made their way towards the kitchen and began their work on the bouquet. “Seriously though, is there some kind of occasion I didn’t hear about?”

“I got a promotion,” Peter smiled.

“Nureyev, that’s great,” Juno returned. “So why’d you get me something?”

“Well, I know if I told you first, you’d work yourself half to death making a nice dinner for me, and if anything, it would leave us both a little stressed and tired with the fact that sometimes we have to perform marriage, rather than merely enjoying it,” Nureyev explained.

“So you didn’t want me to do something nice for you?”

Nureyev shook his head, pausing to toss the plastic from the bouquet into the trash.

“I finally figured out why celebrating things like that makes me so miserable,” Nureyev elaborated. “I like it when you’re happy. We don’t have to celebrate everything like the rest of the world just because we’re pretending to be a part of it. I still change my face every morning and you’re still impervious to sewing mistakes. If I wanted to celebrate something nice by doing something for the both of us, I ought to do something for you as well.”

“Nureyev,” Juno couldn’t help but smile.

“Call me a hopeless romantic if you must.”

“I mean, yeah, but that was also really nice,” Juno returned gently. “You giant sap.”

“Why must you be so cruel to me?” Nureyev pretended to huff.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but I’ve already got a nice dinner planned,” Juno sighed. “There’s good news. I dunno if you’ve checked the paper recently, but it’s really good.”

“Do enlighten me.”

“It was gonna be a surprise for dinner,” Juno huffed, trying and failing to turn back to stemming the flowers while Nureyev fixed him with a pleading expression. “And I’m not kissing you until you get rid of the mustache, so don’t even try that.”

Alexander Noble’s face did not drift away so much as it snapped out of existence, revealing the sharp-faced gentleman thief Juno had fallen in love with. The absence of the false mustache made him a little more amicable to the idea of getting held close in Nureyev’s arms and having a gentle trail of kisses pressed along a ticklish spot on his neck and up his jaw until Peter reached his lips and kissed him like his life depended on it.

“You didn’t miss me that much, did you?” Juno chuckled once Nureyev, tragically, was forced to part for air.

“An hour without you is an eternity, my love,” he bemoaned.

“You’re a moron.”

“So what’s the surprise?” Nureyev asked without missing a beat, one hand still on the side of Juno’s face and the other holding onto his waist as if they were mere moments from one of the many occasions when Juno had put on the radio and they had danced in the kitchen while Nureyev let the eggs burn.

“Well, as much as I hate being a housewife—”

“Job applications take time, dear,” Nureyev assured him.

“It’s given me a hell of a lot of time to watch the news,” Juno continued. “They’ve started arresting Rossignol execs.”

Nureyev raised an eyebrow.

“I knew about the one, but—”

“It gets better,” Juno grinned.

“Oh?”

“And since they caught some footage of your face changing and leaked the tape recorder to the media, there’s been a pro-mutant bill going around that’s getting some serious attention,” Juno added. “So it made me think I might wanna ask you an important question.”

“And that is?”

With a trick of pickpocketing he was sure Nureyev had taught him, he slipped the ring bought for Alexander Noble off of Nureyev’s hand and sank down onto one knee.

“Dear, your dress—”

“Shut up,” Juno cut him off with a snort. “Will you marry me for real?”

“Oh, Juno—”

“I mean, not as us, obviously. And only if the bill passes, so if it doesn’t, maybe we can just renew the vows for the aliases and have it mean an extra something, or if you don’t want to, that’s fine, we can just—”

Nureyev seemed to entirely give up on keeping his nice work slacks free from the same fate as Juno’s skirt, for he cast his flowers aside, dropped to his knees, and pulled Juno into a rib-cracking hug.

“Geez, who knew you were so much of a wife guy,” Juno snorted to hide the fact that he was grinning like an idiot into Nureyev’s shoulder.

“You did, dear,” Nureyev returned with a chuckle. “Of course I’ll marry you, my love. You might just be the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Juno. I’ve wanted to spend the rest of my life with you for quite some time now, I just was never sure how to ask.”

“Oh, honey, were the flowers—”

“An attempt,” Nureyev smiled.

“And last week with the dinner?”

“I kept second guessing myself and well, I suppose you got there first,” Nureyev smiled.

“I knew you weren’t just being nice to me for no reason,” Juno snorted, his laugh only escalating when Nureyev fixed him with a horrified look.

“Love,” he all but gasped.

“I’m teasing,” Juno clarified. “I—uh—I really want this. More than I think I could ever put into words. Ever since I met you, there was always something about you. More than just your face or the way you hold yourself or how you talk. I just—I dunno. I think you’re the kind of person you only come across once or twice in your entire life, and I just got lucky enough not to miss you.”

“My love,” Nureyev smiled, though it seemed his words lost the battle with his desire to kiss Juno again, both on their knees on the floor and hardly caring at all. Juno certainly didn’t mind. He was pretty sure that was the best kiss of his entire life.

When he pulled away, Nureyev, who had apparently stolen his ring back, held Juno’s face in his hands like it was something priceless. Juno was just about positive he was going to start crying if he thought about that for too long, so instead he merely let his eye run over the gentle lines that had embedded themselves into Nureyev’s face with time and relaxation and a gradual acceptance of the fact that he was a silver fox waiting to happen and that was in no way a detriment to his character.

“How the hell did I get lucky enough to end up with a guy like you?” Juno couldn’t help but grin.

“Well, I suppose it started when I decided journalistic integrity mattered less to me than—“

Juno winced.

“That was rhetorical,” he chuckled.

“Fine then. You decided a world worth living in was a world worth fighting for,” Nureyev smiled as he somehow found the composure to get to his feet. Always the gentleman, he offered Juno his elbow.

However, it seemed he couldn’t find the composure to get back to his work of stemming the bouquet, so he merely held Juno close, arms around his waist and lips occupied with kissing the top of his head while Juno stuffed the half-stemmed bouquet into the nearest piece of glassware and called it a day. If he was being honest with himself, it might have been the prettiest thing in their kitchen since the morning when he woke up early to find Nureyev covered in flour in an attempt to cook him a surprise breakfast. 

“I was going to help you with those, you know,” Nureyev murmured, words muffled by a kiss to the side of Juno’s neck.

“Yeah, sure,” Juno snorted. “And when were you going to do that?”

“Once I was done being a, as you would put it, lovesick moron,” Nureyev audibly smiled.

“Okay, so never,” Juno teased.

“Love,” Nureyev huffed.

“Sure, make your poor wife do all the work while he’s stuck at home pining for you like you’re gone at war or something,” Juno chuckled. “A guy can only sew so many eye patches, Nureyev.”

“My wife,” Nureyev grinned, turning Juno in his arms and beaming. “You’re going to be my wife.”

“Don’t overuse the word yet, you’ll get sick of it,” Juno snorted, though the laugh was wiped right off his face when Nureyev spun him into a dancer’s dip and kissed him once again.

“Mr. Nureyev or Mr. Steel?” Nureyev asked once the blood running to his head began to make his face flush.

“I thought I was Mrs. Noble,” Juno returned, though it was hard to find anything to joke about at all with Nureyev beaming down at him as if Juno had scattered the stars in the sky by hand. “I mean, I can’t really go around telling people, so either’s fine with me.”

“Juno Steel-Nureyev,” Peter grinned with an expression that might have been religious ecstasy at the thought of it all. When his arms grew too sore, he righted Juno back on his feet, though he certainly didn’t find any reason he should quit their embrace. “My wife, Juno Steel-Nureyev.”

“Yeah, and how about you, Mr. Alexander Noble? Are you gonna take my name?”

Nureyev chuckled.

“Dear, I think coming from me, Peter Steel is less of a name and more of a confession.”

“Whatever,” Juno snorted. “I think it’s nice.”

“Juno, I’m sure you wouldn’t take my last name if it were Abetted Arson.”

“You don’t know that,” Juno protested. “I think I’d take your last name if it were just about anything.”

“Well, then I’d be happily married to Juno Just About Anything,” Nureyev joked.

“I don’t care how many dad jokes you tell, we’re not adopting until I know you can survive having a cat,” Juno teased, though Nureyev merely hummed a kiss into his neck and swayed to some melody Juno couldn’t hear.

“But my allergies,” Nureyev complained, though from the sound of his smile, Juno had a feeling he wasn’t too upset.

“Yeah, well I’m allergic to children,” Juno laughed. “Ever think of that, Peter Steel? Ever think about your poor, allergy-prone wife?”

“My wife,” Nureyev repeated, for that seemed to be the only part he cared about.

“Yeah, well your wife’s gotta go cook a promotion-engagement dinner,” Juno snorted. “And before you argue with me about that, I’m making you help me. If you’re gonna be stuck with me the rest of your life, you’d better be able to learn how to work a microwave.”

“Of course I will,” Nureyev smiled, squeezing Juno so tight that he caught a faint whiff of familiar cologne that had once filled his head with thoughts of smoky avenues and flickering street lamps, only to be replaced by memories of the kitchen’s warm glow and the way Nureyev tried to drag him back to bed every morning for the sake of a few more minutes of cuddling. “I have the rest of our lives together to learn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WAHOO!!! WE MADE IT TO THE END!! thanks again to danny for this kickass prompt!!
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill steal ur shorts
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!

**Author's Note:**

> oop
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill practice unethical journalism
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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